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.