10/08: Sarah Wilbur

Please join us at the first Chew on This of Fall 2013
Tuesday, Oct 8 at 12pm
Kaufman Conference Room #160

SARAH WILBUR

Dance for Veterans: Political Affect and Alternative Exits

With a now-notorious backlog in mental health service provisions at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and an estimated 22 veterans committing suicide each day, the State’s ongoing investment in movement-based training strategies has taken an interesting turn toward dance-based health interventions. As a joint effort between psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and dance educators at the Greater Los Angeles VA Medical Center, the Dance For Veterans Program works to restore a sense of bodily authority among veterans who are living with severe mental illness. In this paper, I situate the Dance for Veterans program alongside a range of military training and killing practices using John Protevi’s (2009) efforts to resuscitate a politics of emotion for poststructuralist philosophy through recourse to cognitive neuroscience. As a materialist philosopher with a skeptical eye toward affective cognition, Protevi’s Deleuguattarian framework considers how biocultural and biopolitical factors contribute to emotional reprogramming at all levels of military service. Protevi’s work offers particular resources for dance and performance scholars seeking to understand the state’s historical investment in affective reprogramming through social practice, for better and for worse.

Sarah Wilbur is a choreographer, performer, dance educator, and academic who currently works for UCLA and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. To reconcile the strange path that led her here (through the more well-traversed routes of non-profit arts production, concert dance, musical theatre, opera, and experimental performance) Sarah’s dissertation research offers an analytical framework through which the choreographic co-operation of artists and institutions might come into sharper relief.  Prior to relocating to Los Angeles in 2007, Sarah worked for a decade in the non-profit arts sector as an artist-advocate-administrator. Conference presentations include: Congress On Research in Dance, American Society for Theater Research, UCLA GESIS Teacher Education Program/UCLA, and Dance Under Construction. Sarah’s writing on dance and the limits of U.S. arts policy appears the current Journal of Emerging Dance Scholarship. She also sweats more than most humans.

6/5: Emily Beattie

Please join us during WEEK 10

CHEW ON THIS

WEDNESDAY, 6/5, 12-1p

Kaufman Conference room 160

Talk followed by light refreshments and snacks

Presenter: Emily Beattie

shadowline: Playing with the edges in performance and technology 

In rehearsal periods in the Fall and Winter, I was given the opportunity to set work on students in a pre-professional dance company at Brown University. The piece I set was called shadowline, which is a performance work that featured projected animations, dance, and an original score. I chose to include projections as a way to visually address the storyline of the piece, which features a piece of technology that creates a fatal connection for the main character. The actual integration of this component posed many questions for me and my process. Performer interaction with the projections provided some challenges and some benefits for the performers as well as the experience of the viewer. By looking at earlier versions of the work, explaining how the animation is now activated, and showing the final work, I hope to discuss some of the implications for dancemaking with technology that I found.

Emily Beattie is originally from Fredericksburg, Virginia and currently works as a performer and choreographer in both Boston and Los Angeles. As a performer, Emily has been honored to participate in the works of Stephen Koplowitz, Edisa Weeks, Donald Byrd, Sara Rudner, Jennifer Monson, Simone Forti, Lionel Popkin and several national companies. Since 2003, her interest in collaborative performance and technology interventions has been supported and performed both nationally and internationally by organizations such as Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater, Los Angeles, Pieter Performance Space, Brown University, Boston CyberArts Festival, Green Street Studios, Somerville Arts Council, Glouchester New Arts Festival, Oberon Theater, World Arts Music/Crash Arts, Support Women Artists Now Day Inc., Kyoto Cultural Festival 2011 Renku Poetry Conference and Festival, and Rhodopi International Theater Lab.  Emily extensively collaborates with composer and designer Eric Gunther who founded the design and performance studio sosolimited. emilybeattie.com

5/28: Dr. David Shorter | 5/30: Yehuda Sharim

Please join us for TWO Chew on This sessions, this week!

Tuesday, 5/28, 12-1pm
*Kaufman Room 208*
Presenter: Professor David Shorter
Going Glocal: Collaborating with Indigenous Language Learners on Globalizing Technologies

Thursday, 5/30, 12-1pm
*Kaufman Room Conference*
Presenter: Yehuda Sharim
Yehuda will present on his dissertation.

5/21: Sharna Fabiano | 5/24: Laurel Tentindo & Kevin Williamson

Please join us for TWO Chew on This sessions next week!

Tuesday, 5/21 at 12pm,
Kaufman Conference Room

SHARNA FABIANO
Prawns a la Indigo: Tango as Physical Theater

AND

Friday, 5/24 at 12pm
Kaufman Room 200

LAUREL TENTINDO and KEVIN WILLIAMSON
Neanderthal vs Cyborg

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Tuesday, 5/21 at 12pm, Kaufman Conference Room
SHARNA FABIANO

Prawns a la Indigo: Tango as Physical Theater

In February and March, I had the honor of collaborating with the Czech company Spitfire on a new project: Prawns a la Indigo. Spitfire refers to its own work as “authorial theater” and often seeks to combine genres and styles of live performance. In this session, I’ll give a guided tour of some rehearsal footage and speak about how we assembled physical material generated 1. through tango movement principles, 2. in response to surrealist images, and 3. following an original script, which describes four women who meet in a café to start a revolution.
Sharna Fabiano is an internationally recognized tango artist. She was a member of the NYC-based all-woman company TangoMujer from 2003-2006, and ran her own performing group in Washington, DC from 2006-2010, investigating the fusion of tango with contemporary dance and theater. While living in DC, she also founded the nonprofit organization Tango Mercurio, which created outreach programs for urban youth and elders and an all-volunteer tango orchestra for social dancing. In 2008, Sharna was named to Dance magazine's "25 To Watch" list and featured as an emerging artist in the Washingtonian. In addition to her performance work, she also co-founded the Global Milonga, an international benefit for reforestation that links simultaneous tango events through online streaming audio and video, and the Women’s Tango Retreat, a national gathering for women who dance both roles.

***

Friday, 5/24 at 12pm, Kaufman Room 200
LAUREL TENTINDO and KEVIN WILLIAMSON

Neanderthal vs Cyborg

Neanderthal vs Cyborg is a sci-fi dance experiment.  Parallel histories morph in and outside of the studio to reveal the absurd and vulnerable.  It is an imagined dance where two people make a show about making a show. Through the vastness of the incomprehensible universe, these two characters are magnetically pulled together.  The responsibility to make an intelligible piece weighs on them.  These fallen heroes exploit one another and themselves while engaging in theatrical impulses,   genre-bending, and improvised dance.  They search for authenticity.  This performance transforms into a party - if everything goes right.   Laurel and Kevin are using Chew on This as an informal opportunity to share this process with the UCLA community and to experiment with technical elements (Thanks to Arsenio!).  The final performance of Neanderthal vs Cyborg will take place at the Electric Lodge in Venice on June 7th at 9 pm the event is FREE.

Laurel Tentindo (laureltentindo.com) and Kevin Williamson(http://kdubdance.org/) are dancers, choreographers and educators, both currently in their first year of the MFA program.

5/14: Doran George

Please join us at our next Chew on This
Tuesday, May 14 at 12pm
Kaufman Conference room

DORAN GEORGE

Tearing down The Final Curtain: Performing Communities of Radical Pleasure.

My editorial for the last of Britain’s Dance Theatre Journal focuses upon the influence of sex radical culture on performance and dance in San Francisco. I argue that prudish art praxis became so entrenched throughout the 20th century that working with sex takes labor, and erotic performance and dance struggle to achieve the status of art. Yet independent alternative sexual practice is crucial for performance now that state and commercial interests have appropriated feminist and queer representational strategies. Critical attention to the Bay Area sex/art community is important because as alternative sexual practice has appeared to enter the mainstream, patriarchal heterosexual ideals have replaced rank and file critical cultures. In broad strokes I compare key influences in San Francisco with emphases in London dance performance that impose a chaste culture. Yet I suggest that if sexual experimentation is seen as a queering of the pioneer narrative, complex racial and national discourses that cut across California are erased.

Doran George is a scholar and artist completing a doctorate on ‘Somatics’ in contemporary dance. His scholarship is published in dance, film, and art journals including chapters in forthcoming Oxford University press volumes, and his artist’s images and writing is found in art publications. Doran has chaired academic conferences, presented symposia, as well as programmed performance, all with a focus on identity deconstruction. He has been funded as an artist by: L.A. Cultural Affairs, London Arts Board, Arts Council of England, British Council, Finnish Arts Council and others. Doran has danced for various choreographers, works as a professional mentor, and leads participatory projects such as working with people diagnosed with terminal illness and those experiencing bereavement. He teaches in art colleges, universities and professional arts contexts in Europe and the US. Doran trained at the European Dance Development Center (NL) and completed a Feminist Performance MA at Bristol University (U.K.)

NEXT Chew on This

Tuesday, 5/21: Sharna Fabiano
Conference room

Friday, 5/24: Laurel Tentindo and Kevin Williamson
Room 200

5/7: "From X to Why: A Museum Takes Shape"

 Please join us at our next Chew on This

From X to Why: A Museum Takes Shape
Tuesday, 5/7 from 12-1pm
Kaufman Room 208
Presenters: Professor Mary (Polly) Nooter Robert
Graduate Students: Peter Haffner, Elyan Hill, Dana Marterella, Elaine Sullivan, Rita Valente, and Tommy Tran

From X to Why: A Museum Takes Shape is the graduate student-curated section of the Fowler Museum’s 50th anniversary exhibition, opening in Fall 2013. This mini-exhibition focuses on the Fowler Museum’s earliest acquisitions. These objects demonstrate the strength and breadth of the collection and foreshadow the Fowler’s role as one of the premiere museums for preserving and displaying works of art from cultures around the world. In this presentation, the graduate students (Dana Marterella, Elaine Sullivan, Elyan Hill, Peter Haffner, Rita Valente, and Tommy Tran) and the project’s mentor (Professor Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts) will talk about the conceptualization and research process underlying the exhibition. They will also explain the core concept of the project, and how it materializes in the title. Finally, the group will guide us through the exhibition and introduce us to some of the objects that will be displayed.

Dana Marterella, Elaine Sullivan, Elyan Hill, Peter Haffner, and Rita Valente are doctoral students in the Department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance at UCLA. Tommy Tran is a doctoral student at the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. Martarella is developing a comparative study of Victoria Ocampo and Eva Perón, in which she examines how celebrity, commodity, class, and gender intersect as two women curate a global image for self and nation. Sullivan’s research interests include museum studies and the visual arts of the Luba peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hill examines the significance of dance practices in honor of the West African water deity Mami Wata in understanding African perspectives on the black Atlantic. Haffner’s research focuses on the connections between tourism and the production of art in Haiti. Valente studies how theater festivals in Portuguese-speaking countries use the concept of Lusophony to negotiate the colonial past shared by those nations. Tran studies the contemporary use of folklore and heritage in Jeju Island, South Korea.

Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts is Professor in UCLA's Department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance and Consulting Curator for African Art at the LACMA. She holds an MA and PhD in Art History from Columbia University, and served as Senior Curator at the Museum for African Art until 1994 and as Deputy Director and Chief Curator of UCLA’s Fowler Museum until 2008. Roberts is the author and curator of thematic books and exhibitions that explore the philosophical underpinnings of African visual arts and expressive culture, such as secrecy, memory, writing and inscription, as well as topics of the body and female representation, arts of divination and healing, and theories of exhibiting. Together with Allen F. Roberts, she produced the award-winning works Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History (1996) and A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal (2003). In 2007, she was decorated by the Republic of France as a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters for her promotion of francophone African artists.


NEXT CHEW on THIS: May 14 with Doran George

4/30: Peter Haffner

Please join us at our next Chew on This
Tuesday, 4/30 at 12pm
Kaufman conference room 160

Aesthetic Beneficence: Tourism and Art Production in Haiti

Art objects from are sold to tourists and collectors throughout the Caribbean and the Americas as souvenirs and decorative objects that signify notions of exoticism, tropicality, and primitivism. How have writers, art dealers, curators, and collectors helped to shape and advance such problematic narratives? How did “Haitian art” come to be classified as such and by whom? What discourses are advanced as a result of such classifications? How can theories of tourism help us analyze the history of contemporary art in Haiti and understand the responses by artists in Haiti and abroad?

Peter Haffner is a second year PhD student in the Department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on the connections between tourism and the production of art in Haiti through an interdisciplinary approach that includes visual studies, museum studies, cultural studies, tourism studies, and art history. After receiving his BA in Art History from Bard College, he worked in several New York City art galleries in a variety of positions. In addition to his academic work, Peter is a co-leader of the upcoming student-curated section of the Fowler Museum at UCLA’s 50th anniversary exhibitions.

2/19: Doran George

Please join us at our next CHEW ON THIS:
Tuesday, 12/19/13 at 12pm
Kaufman conference room, 160

PRESENTER: DORAN GEORGE

Moving constructions of nature: dancing the Somatically trained body from collective resistance to compliant individuality.

Dramatic historical change defines a lineage of “Somatic” contemporary dance practice based on the idea of universal human physiology and subjectivity. Biological and mechanical constructs form the logic for dance classes, which are said to uncover “natural” movement that emphasizes authenticity, individuality, and harmonious cooperation. By the 1970s, alliances and interconnected pedagogies had formed a transnational web of associations between artists and institutions teaching Somatics in several post/industrialized “Western” locales. Principles in the rhetoric of Somatics sustained three distinct phases of development: over forty years dancers embodied transformation in the conception of democratic participation, self-representation, and capitalist productivity. 1970s collective participation was established to achieve “direct democracy,” as practitioners critiqued established modern dance, fueled by mistrust of “representative democracy” and hierarchy. The 1980s and 1990s saw the recalibration of Somatics to staunch individuality in identity-based protest choreography, even while “signature choreography” was marked in a new arts business-growth culture. By the close of the 20th century the widespread institutionalization of Somatics embodied late capitalist appropriation of previously critical practices: Personal responsibility and individual freedom for dancers has purportedly displaced authoritarianism, yet ‘natural’ self-determination and flexibility are requirements serving the smooth and efficient running of an unequal economy.


Doran George is a dance artist completing a doctorate at U.C.L.A. on ‘Somatic’ training in contemporary dance. He has received arts funding from L.A. Cultural Affairs, London Arts Board, Arts Council of England, British Council, Finnish Arts Council, venue commissions and regional funding. Doran has danced for various choreographers, and works as a mentor, most recently through the California Choreographers In Mentorship Exchange program, and The Wellcome Trust in London. He also uses performance to investigate social problems like bereavement and diagnosis with terminal illness. Doran has chaired academic conferences and presented numerous symposia in the arts. He is in print and on the web in dance, film, and performance art journals and art publications, and has chapters in forthcoming Oxford University Press publications. He teaches in universities, art colleges, and professional dance settings. Doran trained at the European Dance Development Center (NL) and completed an M.A. in Feminist Performance at Bristol University (U.K.)