Below we present information about the event, speakers and schedule. More details can be found on the CMR website.
Introduction
Bringing insights from critical dance studies and performance studies into anthropology, this workshop focuses on interaction and improvisation. Through our moving, interconnected bodies — as scholars, performers, and activists — we aim to explore corporeal imaginaries, utopias, challenges, adaptations, and limitations.
From Brazil to Cuba, Mexico, Palestine, Thailand, and Senegal, we examine ways of knowing through the body and strategies for fostering resilience through community. As political, historical, and existential orientations are expressed not only through words but also through movement, this workshop explores the role of bodily practices in constructing and transforming both literal and symbolic spaces of self-affirmation.
We focus on bodies in motion — situated at the intersection of various axes of power and inequality — to gain insight into performances of individual agency in relation to (un)successful stories of migration.
Our aim is to bridge the gap between two interconnected yet traditionally separated forms of knowledge production: theory/research and practice. As part of the workshop, we encourage participants to engage emotionally in a movement-based session.
Schedule
Sesssion 1
2:00 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. – BST (15:00-16:15 – CEST)
- Ballets, kin and wives: the social foundations of sabar artists’ careers in migration, Alice Aterianus-Owanga, University of Neuchâtel
- ‘¡Que me quiten lo bailado!’ Body work, global dance markets, and transnational mobilities, Dr Ruxandra Ana, University of Lodz/University of St Andrews
- Beyond Resilience: Embodied Power and Gestures of Freedom in Palestine, Ana Laura Rodríguez Quiñones, University of Neuchâtel
Session 2 and Discussion
3:20 p.m. – 4:50 p.m. – BST (16:20 – 17:50 – CEST)
- From Tourism to Human Rights: DanceBrazil’s Embodied Messaging on the World Stage, Lucía M. Suárez, Iowa State University
- Striving for Identity and Nationhood: Afro-Mexican Dance as a Vehicle for Cultural Representation and Community Transformation in Oaxaca and Veracruz, Mexico, Daniela Rodríguez Neira, University of St Andrews
- Reflections on Flowing and Feeling with Fire Dancers in Thailand, Tiffany Pollock, York University
The discussion will be moderated by Stavroula Pipyrou, University of St Andrews
Dance Workshop
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. – BST (18:00-19:00 – CEST)
- Thinking with/through our Bodies led by Daniela Rodríguez Neira, University of St Andrews
General information
30 May 2025
2 p.m. – 6 p.m. (BST)/15:00-19:00 (CEST)
Location: Large Rehearsal Room, Union Building, St Mary’s Place, St Andrews
Meeting ID: 844 3251 6339
Access code: 236761
Information: Dr Ruxandra Ana (Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Lodz)
Source: Center for Minorities Research