Ann David, University of Roehampton, Centre for Research in Arts and Creative Exchange:

Embodied Ways of Knowing: Dance, Performance and ‘Othered’ Bodies on Stage

Abstract:

This talk examines how our bodily presence and experience can play key roles in enriching and deepening understanding. How do bodies affect each other? How might we acquire, produce and understand knowledge through bodily engagement? How might an anthropological or ethnological approach assist us in these endeavours? How does engagement with embodied ethnography, for example, elicit new and deeper levels of meaning? Using research from dance and performance studies as well as the anthropology of dance, I argue for the need to listen to the ‘voice of the body’ and to develop new epistemologies as thinking, feeling and moving beings that look to the somatic, kinetic, and linguistic phenomenon of embodiment, and help us develop more meaningful understandings of others’ cultures. In this light, I take the example of Indian dancer Ram Gopal and examine the issues of racialised dancing bodies on stage and in performance that critically examine representation and viewership.

Bio: Ann R David, PhD, Professor of Dance and Cultural Engagement, is Visiting Professor at King’s College London, as well as a Cultural Engagement Fellow in their Culture, Media and Creative Industries department. She holds an Emerita Professorial position at the University of Roehampton where she worked for 17 years, including as Head of the Dance Department for 6 years. Her research and teaching specialisms are in dance anthropology (ritual, migration, diaspora, embodiment) and South Asian classical & popular dance; her dance training includes ballet, contemporary, folk, and the Indian classical styles of bharatanatyam and kathak. She has published widely on this work, as well as on dance in Bollywood and on the ritual dances of Tibetan Buddhism and has completed a monograph of Indian dancer Ram Gopal, published by Bloomsbury. Ann is passionate about the need for the arts and dance in education, working closely with policy makers in the arts, and is on the board of several arts organisations. She has given public talks at the V&A, the British Library, British Museum and National Portrait Gallery and been involved in post-show discussions at Asia House, Nehru Centre, Sadler’s Wells, Southbank and the Bhavan. Ann has appeared on BBC radio and TV on several occasions and is on the editorial board of several academic journals. Her current interests are in creating cultures of (mutual) care in the arts that support an ecological dimension.

Die Veranstaltung findet am Donnerstag, 11. April 2024 um 17 Uhr am Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, Hanuschgasse 3, 1010 Wien, Seminarraum 1  statt.

Es gibt auch die Möglichkeit, online beizuwohnen:

https://univienna.zoom.us/j/66776638562?pwd=NXFGSVJlekorUWVHSkxKN3ptUlpwUT09