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.