11.29 - Olive McKeon

Olive McKeon
Dance and its Negation: On Konzept Tanz and its Discontents

November 29
12pm, Kaufman Room 160

In this lecture-performance, I discuss the major figures within the emergence of conceptual dance from the mid-90s to present, the distinguishing characteristics of this genre, its relation to conceptualism in the visual arts, the distinction between dancey-dance and conceptual dance, the split it generates between dance and choreography, and more ambitiously, the negation of dance, the destructive seed or utopian kernel that will be the undoing of the form. Particular attention will be paid to understanding male privilege within dance and shifts in artistic labor within capitalism. As with all proper lecture-performances, this will be part-autobiography, part-farce, part-dry-dead-panned-theory.

Olive Mckeon is a communist, but perhaps the kind of communist you have not met yet. She is also a peach, a loose wolf, a lost bird, and a woman. Her favorite choreographer is Matija Ferlin.

11.15 - Doran George

November 15
12pm Kaufman room 160

Dancing Queer Nature: Exploring Jennifer Monson's choreographic practice of the early 90s as critical re-engagement with radical feminist aesthetics.

This is a presentation of ideas that I am working on for a conference paper and journal article. I propose that radical feminist aesthetic practices have fallen into critical oblivion since the emergence of queer theory. Yet they were foundational in the formation of extant queer critique of heteronormative genders. The artistic contribution of choreographer Jennifer Monson highlights how cultural feminism produced a female body that challenged the natural basis of heterosexual gender. In line with second wave feminism, she mobilized the widely held belief in the natural status of the body and gender, yet did so in way that configured as fictional the conceit that gender is bifurcated, real, and static. Monson's oeuvre demonstrates a lineage of feminist staging of female corporeality that deploys the body as a queer effect of nature.

Doran George is a practicing artist, dancer and curator reading for a PhD in Dance at UCLA in California researching the impact of 'somatic practice' on the late 20th Century modern-dance avant-garde. His performance work includes actions such as being encased in bricks and mortar and has been presented in Live Art, Dance, Theatre, Visual Art, and politically-themed 'identity' based contexts in Europe and the US. Doran has been publically funded and commissioned in the UK, Finland,
the Netherlands, and the US. He sustains an issue-based participatory/dialogic arts practice, which has been supported by residencies in arts and non-arts contexts, such as with Los Angeles Alzheimer's Association. Doran has danced for among others, Yvonne Meier (US), Ishmael Huston-Jones (US), Mark Tompkins (F), Mary Fulkerson (D), Bock and Vincenzi (UK) and Arlette George (UK). He
works as a dramaturg and mentor, most recently through the Choreographers In Mentorship Exchange program mentoring Julie Tolentino and currently through The Wellcome Trust, mentoring Catherine Long. Doran is published in dance, film and performance art journals and art publications both as an artist and a scholar. He teaches in higher education and professional dance settings, and curates cutting edge symposia and performance events focused on cultural practices of identity deconstruction.

November 1 Chew On This has been CANCELLED

Please join us on 11.8 for Jose Reynoso

November 8 - Jose Reynoso: Embodiments of Class and the Folk in Eliticizing the Popular and Contructing the Modern; Anna Pavlova in Mexico City (1919)

Jose Reynoso

Embodiments of Class and the Folk in Eliticizing the Popular and constructing the modern: Anna Pavlova in Mexico City (1919)

12pm Kaufman room 160

Nine years after the start of the armed Mexican revolution, Anna Pavlova visited Mexico
City in 1919 already established as a universalized referent of high culture. While engaging in processes of selective re-choreographing through which “low brow” cultural practices are “elevated” to the realm of high art, Pavlova revolutionized concert dance in Mexico City by dancing a popular Mexican folk dance. As a dancing swan representative
of the presumably universal human spirit, Pavlova danced el Jarabe Tapatio on pointe
dressed as a Mexican china poblana. This confluence of the “universal” and the local in
the same body –a body endowed with “artistic genius”- represented the embodiment of
the conundrum that elites in primarily non-white, third-world countries confront as they
engaged in an endless quest to catch up with modernity –technological and scientific- as
they also construct a local identity while trying to gain universal appeal to and resonance
with the civilized first-world. In this paper I will show how Pavlova’s performances of
her Europeanized ballet repertoire and of her “refined” Jarabe Tapatio produced a social
space, a homotopic space, in which a class of similars among Mexican elites re-affirmed
their identities as cultured, civilized moderns –distinctively Mexican, yet with universal
appeal.

Jose Luis Reynoso holds a B.A. (Magna Cum Laude) and a M.A. both in Psychology
from California State University Los Angeles and a M.F.A. in Choreography from
UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures / Dance where he is currently a Ph.D.
candidate in Culture and Performance Studies. As a choreographer and performer,
Jose has collaborated with performance art and dance artists and his own academic and
choreographic work has been presented nationally and internationally.

10.11.11 - Parthiv Shah: Art as Witness

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
Parthiv Shah: Art as Witness
Kaufman Room 160 at 12 noon
Reception to follow in the Rainbow Lounge 

Center for Media and Alternative Communication's (CMAC) role has been to create an interface
between artists from different genres, to facilitate and to provide a platform for production, cultural
exchange of art and ideas, and dialogue in the visual and performing arts. A key objective of the
organization is conceptualizing and implementing specially designed productions mounted on
excellent technological skills. Over nearly a decade the organization has developed projects and
campaigns through different art practices such as new media design, performance, video, public and
community based art and dialogue, sound and other experimental modes of cultural production.
Parthiv Shah will be presenting works in the field of culture, design and media created at the CMAC.

Parthiv Shah is a Fulbright Scholar visiting UCLA from his home in New Delhi, India, where he
serves as the founder-director of the Centre for Media and Alternative Communication. Prof.
Shah is a photographer, filmmaker, and graphic designer. He has made several documentary films,
curated exhibitions, and has several photo-books to his credit, including books on street children
and transgenders in India. He has taught about photography and design in India and beyond,
including at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Growing up in a family of artists and through his own professional training, he brings an interesting intersection of art,
photography and design to his work.

Lately Prof. Shah has been particularly interested and engaged in working on the issue of
image perception and representation. His visual journeys have lead him into working with
communities which are finding a mainstream voice. Parthiv loves traveling, cooking food,
listening to music and flying kites.

Fall Quarter CHEW ON THIS LINE-UP announced

Please join us for the fall quarter series.
More information on each speaker to come!
Tuesdays, 12p-1p
Conference room Kaufman 160

October 11
Parthiv Shah, Fulbright Scholar and Visiting lecturer**
"Art as Witness"
**in Room 208, reception to follow in the Rainbow Lounge

November 1
Dana Marterella

November 8
Jose Reynoso

November 15
Doran George

November 29
Olive McKeon
"Dance and its Negation: On Konzept Tanz and its Discontents"

5.31 : Rosemary Candelario

May 31, 2011
Rosemary Candelario
Eiko & Koma: Choreographing Spaces Apart in Asian America
12pm Kaufman room 160

Choreography inherently theorizes a relationship between bodies and space. My research pushes beyond the reach of the dancing body to the idea that choreography may serve as a nexus of the politics of place and space, constructing a multiplicity of inter-relationships among bodies, sites, and technologies. In my dissertation on the Japanese American dancers, Eiko & Koma, I argue that the pair's choreography does exactly this, effecting as a result new spaces- which I term spaces apart- where alternatives may be performed. Rehearsing my dissertation's main arguments, I will describe the qualities and mechanisms of these spaces apart, each of which evinces a particular choreographic process while concentrating a series of recurring questions asked by Eiko & Koma's body of work. I will demonstrate how the choreographers have for the past forty years generated spaces apart that rework mourning, perform reparation, interrupt nature/culture binaries, and forge intercultural alliances.

Rosemary Candelario is a PhD Candidate in Culture and Performance at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is completing her dissertation on the US-based Japanese dancers, Eiko & Koma. Rosemary earned an MA in Culture and Performance from UCLA in 2007, and a BA in Anthropology and German Language and Literature from Boston University in 1992. Areas of specialization include the Japanese postwar avant-garde movement form butoh, and the Indian classical dance, Bharatanatyam, with research interests in the globalization of these movement forms, and on dance in diaspora, intercultural collaboration, site-specific performance, arts activism, and ideas of place and space. Rosemary published the article "A Manifesto for Moving: Eiko & Koma's Delicious Movement Workshops" in the Journal of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training in 2010. She is also active as a dancer and choreographer.

5.24 : Alexandra Shilling

Alexandra Shilling
Dancing Onscreen: Where does that place us?
May 24, 2011
12pm Kaufman room 160

Ruth St. Denis danced on film in 1894; dance has been featured onscreen for over a century and still we search for places to be seen and heard. As an accidental dance filmmaker, I am interested in utilizing my experimental choreographic investigations to make decisions for the camera and in the editing room. Now that dance is showing up on television (in competition, reality-TV format, supporting singers on shows like 'Glee' and continuing the music video format), on YouTube, and in festivals, is there a space for a deliberately raw, experimental and often wordless aesthetic? If we work outside the codes and formulas laid down by the film industry, where will we be seen? I will discuss my choreographic pursuits that began in response to the events of 9-11 and my family's history of surviving war, the desire to engage with audiences outside of the the traditional theatre space and as an inquiry into the potential of performance to transform spaces and sites while being influenced by cinema and photography. Please join me in approaching dance and experimental film making that invites an immersive experience, viewing a works-in-progress mock installation that is inspiring my inquiry.

May 17 : Damola Osinulu

Damola Osinulu
Searching for God on the City's Edge: A Journey through Lagos's Pentecostal Spaces.
May 17, 2011
12pm Kaufman room 160

There are few developments at the intersection of religious practice and public life in post-independence Nigeria more striking than the advent, over the past three decades, of Pentecostal Christianity. In this presentation, viewers will be invited on a journey through three Pentecostal sites in and around the city of Lagos' Redemption Camp, Canaanland, and Mountain of Fire and Miracles. How are we to understand these sites in relationship to the city? Are they a Utopian alternative to the often-difficult conditions in the city or are they a continuation of the city, acting to perpetuate existing social orders? What is it that draws so many "at least half a million in one gathering" to these sites?  At the core of the arguments I will be presenting is the idea of a Pentecostal Imaginary that subsumes existing cosmologies, incorporates notions of global continuity, and provides appealing explanatory frameworks for believers' lived experiences.

Damola is a PhD candidate in UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures, from where he also obtained an MA in Culture and Performance.  In addition he holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Houston. After practicing architecture for five years in Houston, Boston and New York, he returned to graduate school in 2005 to fully pursue his interest in the study of culture.  His present work investigates three Pentecostal sites in and around the Nigerian city of Lagos as venues where complex cultural identities are negotiated and resolved.  More generally, he is interested in contemporary African identity and how that comes to be expressed through and in space. He recently concluded his dissertation fieldwork research as a Social Science Research Council Fellow and is completing his dissertation based on that research.

5.3 : Kat Williams

Kat Williams:
Outlining American Liberation Mythologies: Democracy and Domination in U.S. Visual Culture
May 3, 2011
12pm, Kaufman room 160

In this presentation I will overview my dissertation project which addresses the cultural commitment of the United States to violent and economic interventions around the world, the current state of democracy in the U.S., and the role of consumerism in each. Harbored in the interdisciplinarity of performance studies, this project investigates the dialectical relationship between entertainment and political action as a force that can be labeled myth. By utilizing anthropological theories of myth I analyze popular media (American Idol, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Tears of the Sun, Gran Torino) in order to interrogate the hegemonic ideologies of American culture.  While my method is a myth analysis of media  my aim, by relying on generative theories of culture, is to assert our collective ability to shift U.S. cultural patterns away from the practice of violent interventions and toward a democracy of dialogue and a consumerism of consciousness.


Kat Williams is a PhD candidate in the Department of World Arts & Cultures. Her research interests include myth/cultural studies, U.S. history, non-violent resistance, Buberian philosophy, arts practice and sustainability. Originally from the conservative suburbs of eastern Kansas she began her undergraduate education as a Fine Arts student at the University of Kansas where she stumbled upon a course in African Art History. Drawn to the intense aesthetics of African arts and thier broad significances within cultures she declared a dual degree. Thus began her education in cultural studies and globalization. She relocated to Los Angeles in 2003 to begin a Master?s degree from UCLA?s African Studies program where she investigated the use of popular media in pursuing cultural change. In 2006 she began her PhD studies in WAC, turning her attention to U.S. culture?s notion of liberation as a motivation for violent intervention in foreign affairs. This summer she will be moving with her family to the forests of Northern California where they have accepted a position as caretakers at a ranch/summer camp. There she intends to focus on the craft of writing and complete her dissertation while further researching sustainability and arts practice as a process of dialogue.

4.28: Lorena Alvarado - National Sentiment, Global Stage

Lorena Alvarado
National Sentiment, Global Stage
April 26, 2011
12pm Kaufman room 160

Sentimiento demands attention. Look at me! Listen! Sentimiento, the embodiment of heartache, solitude, love and longing in the Mexican canción ranchera-- is at the heart of this presentation. In this talk, I analyze how sentimiento's aesthetic of emotional excess is re-signified when performed in a cross-border context, particularly in the work of Oaxacan singer-songwriter Lila Downs. She claims the ranchera, and thus its methods of fervent emotional expression, as a musical influence in her oft-labeled world music. Drawing from performances of songs from her albums La Cantina (2006) and Border: La Linea (2001), I explore how Downs' renditions of rancheras and sentimiento (from her gut) grants her repertoire an aura of "authenticity" and enhances the discourse of mestizaje and borderlands often generated around her persona. Moreover, I examine the problematic effects and affects of sentimiento as embodied by Downs: as both "innate" and performative, as an exoticized expression of Mexican feeling and a form of cultural discipline and vocal technique that affirms and challenges national identity.

Lorena Alvarado earned her B.A. from UC Santa Cruz in Modern Literature and Latin@ Studies and her M.A. from UCLA in Culture and Performance. She looks forward to completing her manuscript, Corporealities of Feeling, this Spring.

4.19 : Jenna Delgado

Please join us for our next Chew on This.

Jenna Delgado
The STAHR! Project: Community-Based Arts and Pedagogy for Adolescent Behavior Change
April 19, 2011
12pm Kaufman room 160

Jenna Delgado will discuss a community-based arts process she led in 2003. Funded through a social service organization and stretching across a 6-month period, STAHR! (Somebody's Talking About HIV Risk!) culminated in the production of an original short film. Consisting of several phases, each level of the program was built upon two program goals: strengthening decision-making skills and lowering HIV risk among youth participants. At the nexus of art-making, social service, and community, STAHR! presented unique challenges to conventions in HIV prevention programming, film production, and collaborative process.  This presentation will focus on the special considerations to curriculum development, artist training, and assessment methods required for the success of such a project.

Jenna M. Delgado is an actor, writer, and facilitator.  She has been a specialist in the design and implementation of youth development programs for 20 years. For much of that time at both the local and the national level she trained art educators, youth workers, and social service providers on issues of sexual health risk, cross cultural dialogue, youth development, and art based curriculum development. In that capacity, Jenna has presented at several local and national conferences speaking on adolescent issues and on the use of theatre arts for behavior change. In non-profit and grass roots sectors, she collaborates in designing long-term art based youth development programs using theories of behavior change and dialogue facilitation to explore notions of community, activism, and youth development. As a graduate student in the Department of World and Cultures, Jenna?s research interests include exploring the function of art making in relationship to adolescent identity construction and community, the critical analysis of negotiations of power in collaborative art process and theorizing the efficacy of process methodologies in relationship to subjective transformation.

4.12 : Alissa Cardone / Kinodance Company

Please join us this Tuesday for our next CHEW ON THIS.

Alissa Cardone | Kinodance Company
Choreography of Elements: An Artist Presentation
April 12, 2011 @  12pm Kaufman room 160


Alissa Cardone, choreographer and co-founder of the intermedia performance collaborative, Kinodance, will give an overview of her MFA portfolio projects, sharing footage from recent touring engagements, and inviting feedback and discussion about the work.

Alissa Cardone, interdisciplinary choreographer, improviser, curator, her work has been supported by Baryshnikov Arts Center/Summer Stages Dance Residency Program, Asian Cultural Council, Massachusetts Cultural Council, LEF Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding (Armenia), Open Society Institute (S. Caucasus), CEC Artslink, Boston Cyberarts, VT Performance Labs and New England Foundation for the Arts. Co-artistic director of internationally acclaimed intermedia performance collaborative Kinodance Company, she's toured nationally and abroad in Japan, Peru, Russia, France, Belgium, Monaco and Armenia and has been presented as a solo artist by Maison Moet Dance Festival/Spiral Hall (Japan), Soundscape (N. Carolina), Gloucester New Arts, DancenowNYC, Soundfield and Bowerbird (Philadelphia). Influenced by trainings in Japan with Min Tanaka (Body Weather Farm) and intensive study and performance engagements with butoh master Akira Kasai, she has collaborated and performed with choreographers such as Xavier Le Roy, Ann Carlson, Paula Josa-Jones, Nora Chipaumire and musicians such as Roger Miller, Masakatsu Takagi, guitarist Chris Brokaw, Tatsuya Nakatani, Mike Bullock, Gene Coleman/Ensemble N_JP and noise artist Jessica Rylan. Alissa is founding director of Critical Moves Contemporary Dance Series (Boston) and co-founder and curator of Boston Cyberarts' Ideas in Motion: Innovations in Dance, Movement and Technology.

Kinodance Company, selected by Dance Magazine's "25-to-watch" in 2008
is an artist collaborative founded in Boston by choreographer Alissa Cardone, filmmaker Alla Kovgan and visual artist Dedalus Wainwright out of passion for the kinetic arts, experimentation and a strong belief in the power of interdisciplinary collaborations.

3.8 - Sam Anderson Rough Cuts: Video and Spectacle in Postwar Sierra Leone

Sam Anderson
Rough Cuts: Video and Spectacle in Postwar Sierra Leone

Masked devils take to the streets to reclaim their city. A war-torn capital tears itself down once again, this time to build itself up. A former military commander marshals dangerous spiritual forces in the name of national reconciliation. After five weeks of preliminary research over the summer and winter breaks, I will discuss some of the struggles and successes of the early stages of a new project in Sierra Leone, and share a ten-minute rough cut of video documentation. Please join me for an informal discussion on image and access, chaos and reconstruction. How can one document the unspeakable? The secret? The invisible? The future?

SAMUEL M. ANDERSON is a second year PhD student in Culture and Performance at UCLA, whose research focuses on aesthetics and politics in the manifestations of the invisible world in West Africa, principally in masked dance. He has recently begun a project on the postwar reconfiguration of militaristic mystic arts in Sierra Leone. Between 2006 and 2008, Sam held a Fulbright scholarship for research in Burkina Faso, where he followed several masking troupes and worked with Ouagadougou-based theatre and dance companies. Other sites of prolonged investigation have included Nigeria, Benin, and Niger. As a video artist, he has collaborated on dance films and interactive animations with groups in the USA, France, and Burkina, including Cie Salia nï Seydou, Cie Philippe Ménard, and Créatures Cie. A former theatre director, Sam co-ran the award-winning Seattle-based company Defibrillator Productions from 2000 until 2006. He received his BA from the University of Washington in Theatre and Anthropology, and his MA from New York University in Performance Studies.

3.1 - WAC MFA year two co-hort - Heather Coker, Sarah Leddy, Herbbie Moore, and Sarah Wilbur: Food For Thought

The MFA year two cohort invites you to join a brainstorming conversation focused on the art of generating meaningful audience feedback on work in progress within and beyond the academy walls. Fresh from their collective production of WATCH THIS! (February 25th at the Glorya Kaufman Dance Theater), choreographers Heather Coker, Sarah Leddy, Herbbie Moore, and Sarah Wilbur will co-facilitate a discussion entertaining useful and not-so-useful strategies for generating viewer or reader critical response to new works, on the stage or on the page.

COLLECTIVE BIOGRAPHY: Heather Coker is a choreographer and filmmaker who fuses both art forms to make dance films and live work that integrates technology. Sarah Leddy creates and performs dance theater work within a variety of settings, fusing her interests in post-modern dance, ensemble-based theater and community engagement. Herbbie Moore is a choreographer with investments in post-modern hip hop experimentation. Sarah Wilbur is a choreographer and director of The Wide Sky Dance Project, a progressive arts initiative supporting choreographic research and experimentation aimed at widespread participation in contemporary dance.

2.22 - Michael Sakamoto: A Case Study in Auto-Ethnography and Practice-Based Research

Michael Sakamoto
Kazuo Stands: A Case Study in Auto-Ethnography and Practice-Based Research
Feb 22, 2011
12pm Kaufman room 160


This presentation will display and critique the author's transdisciplinary methodology of butoh dance theater practice and scholarship, exploring the mechanics of and socio-cultural influences on the scholar-artist entity.  As a modality of historical, cultural, political, and aesthetic contextualization for his performances, the process of practice-based research-- or rather research-based practice-- is central to his "dual" identity.  The author will perform and engage his "scholar" and "artist" identities as a false binary in a dialectic process of auto-ethnographic revelation, placing his artistic and intellectual influences in tension with his psycho-physiological desires and instinctual, improvisational dancing body.


Michael Sakamoto is an interdisciplinary artist active in Butoh-based dance, contemporary theater, media art, and photography. He has performed and/or exhibited in Japan, Thailand, Mexico, and throughout Europe and North America and received numerous grant awards, including from the Japan Foundation, Meet the Composer, and Asian Cultural Council. Michael has taught college/university-level classes and workshops, including at California Institute of the Arts, Chiang Mai University, and many others. He is on faculty in the MFA-Interdisciplinary Arts program at Goddard College, holds a Dance MFA from UCLA, and is a PhD student in Culture and Performance at UCLA.

Website:www.michaelsakamoto.com.

Winter Quarter Line-up Announced!

 

2.08.11 - Angeline Shaka : Putting on the "hula girl"

 2.22.11 - Michael Sakamoto :  Kazuo Stands - A Case Study in Auto-Ethnogoraphy and Practice-Based Research

3.01.11 - WAC MFA 2 : Food For Thought - Methods for garnering feedback on works-in-process

3.08.11 - Samuel M. Anderson : Rough Cuts - Video and Spectacle in Postwar Sierra Leone