DANCE AND ACADEMIA – MOVING THE BOUNDARIES

December Seminar: Movement, Touch, Emotion

Monday 6th December, 6.00-8.00pm

Outreach Room, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St
Giles, Oxford

Small donation appreciated to cover costs.

Bonnie Kemske

Dance, Movement, and Community: object, dancer, and audience interaction
Drawing on a participatory dance event held at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge and subsequent reflection and theoretical development, this paper will explore how object-focused movement can draw together dancers and the
public.

Bonnie Kemske holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art on touch and sculptural ceramics. She works as an artist-researcher, producing both sculptural ceramics and theoretical writings. She is also the Editor of the international magazine Ceramic Review.

Ella Clocksin

Connective tissue? How does physical touch and movement relate to being metaphorically or emotionally touched or moved?
An exploration of how the senses of touch, include those of motion, movement, balance, stability and gesture, might relate to being moved emotionally. Ella will draw on her practice-based research in contemporary art performance to camera to create a discussion that includes the experiences of both performer and viewer.

Ella Clocksin is based in Oxford and has just completed a Fine Art MA at Winchester School of Art, investigating visual and tactile-somatic perception. Her research focuses on the less readily articulated aspects of experience, patterned subliminally within the body and its movements. These include paradoxical experiences of presence/absence, closeness/distance, embodied emotion, and bodily knowing before the conscious mind formulates language.

Project History

Dance and Academia: Moving the Boundaries is an Oxford-based project set up and run by Miranda Laurence. The project aims to facilitate dialogue between practitioners and academics in any field who have an interest in any aspect of dance or movement.  Oxford is a city with a rich academic heritage and is also host to a strong community of professional dance practitioners. Moving the Boundaries aims to be a genuinely
interdisciplinary platform where intersections between research and practice in dance can be explored.

Moving the Boundaries has hosted a day-long conference and a seminar series as part of the Dancin’ Oxford festivals 2008 and 2009 and individual seminars in Oxford in 2010.  Academics and practitioners taking part have come from a wide variety of fields and artistic influences. Most are based in or near Oxford, and have represented institutions in Oxford and also further afield. Speakers have come from a variety of academic backgrounds including anthropology, literature, classics and music, and with influences from practices including physical theatre, intergenerational practice, ballet, and visual arts.