American Dancing Bodies Symposium

Talk-Workshop (dress to move and bring something to write with/on)

Talk: Danced to Deliverance: Black Structures of Form Animating Dance by Thomas F. DeFrantz
This talking dance explores the structure of Black Faith as foundational to many forms of dance in the 21st century. Selected examples from historical spiritual dancing, contemporary ballet, and house dancing suggest moving beyond linear space and time as methods to recognize American dance in its many diasporas.

Workshop: The New Orleans Original BuckShop Workshop by Michelle N. Gibson

Rooted in New Orleans' unique spiritual and cultural traditions, The New Orleans Original BuckShop workshop provides not just a window but a doorway into practices that have sustained communities through joy, rhythm, and resilience.  An exploration of the unifying power of the Black Church and Black syncretic practices, the workshop aims to share the essence of Black New Orleans culture in a format that benefits every participant. These spiritual and communal elements have historically knitted together a potentially fragmented Black community, nourishing a collective identity and fostering resilience through shared rituals and beliefs. Through her Second Line Aesthetic, Michelle N. Gibson's workshop focuses on improvised movement, interpretation, defined footwork, full body articulation, authentic self, and the embrace of communal ritual. With hips leading the torso and feet, legs bent at the knees, and steps that strut, Gibson invites participants to share lived experiences, embodied spiritual unification, harmony, rolling on the same rhythms together, and moving forward as a way to heal the world.

Lecture/Demonstration (bring something to write with/on)

Anna Martine Whitehead and Tara Aisha Willis present embodied assembly and improvisational practices as tools for deliberate indeterminacy and Black feminist sustenance in two movement-driven performances. Each moment is punctuated with live improvised music by Damon Locks—space to process and reflect through practice.

Whitehead shares “assembly,” a movement score from their FORCE! an opera in three acts. Rooted in prisoner solidarity work, queer and femme Black bodies travel an undetermined distance through laborious physical contact, working out the discomforts, joys, and contradictions of embodying Black feminist collective organizing.

Willis describes performing in choreographer Will Rawls and poet Claudia Rankine’s What Remains. Its structured improvisation uses embodied strategies—citational socialities, speculative self-articulation, intra-personal polycentrism—to investigate Black living and lived experience through dynamic collaboration within theatricality’s specular curtailments.
Both presentations are embodied by Whitehead and Willis who perform excerpts of exercises from their respective research, while practicing embodied collaboration. Locks echoes themes of Black collectivity, movement, and care on a sonic register, deploying his archival wandering practice to assemble electronic samples across histories of Black sound and spoken word.

Ayodele Drum & Dance, BraveSoul Movement, The Joffrey Ballet, and Mordine & Company Legacy Project illuminate the languages, lineages, and connective tissue that have helped to make Chicago an epicenter for dance. Immediately following the MO(VE)MENT Performance Showcase, join in celebrating the Dance Center's 50th Season with professional and aspiring movers and makers.

PSST! Stay after for a Snack 'n' Chat in Studio 102 (11:50 AM - 12:20 PM) to connect over calories and fuel up for the afternoon sessions...

Led by the Dance Center’s Assistant Professor of Critical Dance Studies Dr. Ayo Walker, dance artists Emma Draves (bharatanatyam), J’Sun Howard (modern/ improvisation), Monternez Rezell (Hip-Hop), and Angela Tam (Classical Chinese Dance) invite us to embody the improvisational threads essential to their artistic practices and explore the pivotal role that breath and spontaneity plays in acknowledging, celebrating, and innovating within movement forms and traditions.

PSST! Arrive early for a Snack 'n' Chat in Studio 102 (11:50 AM - 12:20 PM) for a chance to connect over calories and fuel up for the afternoon sessions...

Workshop-Paper Presentation (dress to move and bring something to write with/on)
Workshop: "The malleable expressive body, the receptive open mind and the playful artist" and Paper Presentation: “Dialogic Embodiment: A Model for and Case Study of Autoethnographic Dance Composition”

NOTE: this session is concurrent with Emily Stein and Rebecca Crystal's Workshop-Paper Presentation "Building Somatic Confidence: Tools for Ballet and Improvisation" in Studio 300.

Lecture-Performance-Workshop in the Theater (dress to move and bring something to write with/on)
"Neuroemergent Insurgence: Disrupting Methodology, Valuing Emergence, and Embodying Inquiry in Practice and Performance"

Chrissy Martin’s research emphasizes the importance of embracing unique identities and neurological aptitudes by legitimizing the bodymind as a site for practice-based research in the classroom and on stage. Challenging binary and normative frameworks, she introduces a non-method for practicing and performing that values process, identity, and sociocultural context. The ways in which neurodivergent, queer bodyminds navigate and express themselves through movement invites the co-creation of knowledge by inviting the audience to do, speak, and think with her.

NOTE: this session is concurrent with Chrissy Martin’s Lecture-Performance-Workshop "Neuroemergent Insurgence: Disrupting Methodology, Valuing Emergence, and Embodying Inquiry in Practice and Performance" in the Theater.

Workshop-Presentation in Studio 300 (dress to move and bring something to write with/on)
Workshop: "Not Opposites- Embodying Ballet Technique through Somatics"

Through the experience of sensing and mapping their own bodies, this workshop with Emily Stein will provide an experiential example of this perspective. Participants will experience a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lesson, and then physically explore how a somatic approach might be applied to teaching ballet technique. The goal is to open dialog among teachers to expand the possibility for healthy, vital embodiment of the art of ballet.

Presentation: "Improvisation and Somatics as Tools for Engaging Dance Experiences"

This presentation focuses on Rebecca Crystal’s background research, lessons, student feedback, and how somatic-based activities and improvisation can serve as a tool for meaningful experiences that highlight and celebrate each dancers’ individuality.

NOTE: this session is concurrent with Reign Drop Winker’s Workshop "Embodying The River Archetype - The Wolfpack" in Studio 200.

Paper Presentation-Workshop in the Theater (dress to move and bring something to write with/on)
Paper Presentation: "Slouching Towards Technique: Gender dysphoria, physical correctness, and sense of belonging in dance class"

Drawing largely on Nora Sharp’s personal history as an inroad to broader observations, this presentation addresses an intersection of dynamics around movement learning culture, gender dysphoria, and physical difficulty or inability. In particular, it unpacks the ways that striving to be successful at certain kinds of technique - and feeling inadequate if one can’t do so - can overlap with and reinforce identity-based challenges that arise in dance education.

NOTE: this session is concurrent with Nora Sharp’s Paper Presentation-Workshop "Slouching Towards Technique: Gender dysphoria, physical correctness, and sense of belonging in dance class" in the Theater.
Workshop in Studio 200 (dress to move)

Workshop: "Embodying The River Archetype - The Wolfpack "

Drawn from the texts from Into The Wild Unknown Archetypes by Kim Krans and River Notes by Barry Lopez, this workshop uses organic and primal imagery and centers on The River Archetype, embodying rebirth, change, and finding one’s true self. The Wolfpack is a home for dancers of any style to come and be heard and represents loyalty, strong family ties, good communication, education, understanding, and intelligence.

Round Robin Snack 'n' Chat: "Dance, Money, and Success"

When thinking about the trajectory of dance curriculum, it is critical that dance programs explicitly acknowledge and prepare students for the financial realities associated with careers in the field. Joanna Furnans shares her 2022 Gibney Journal essay, “More Truths About Dance and Money,” and expands on certain points in the essay, opening the floor for conversation and commentary. Data from a recent survey by Chicago Dancemakers Forum indicates the range of dance budget sizes for individual artists in Chicago last year and the percentages of artists who are self-funding. Furnans also draws on examples from journalism and dance history to show how details of artists’ lives have been removed from the narratives about their work resulting in a perpetuation of the meritocracy myth and/or dismissal of hardship and struggle.

A New Decade of Dance Films: Screening and Performances by Kierah KIKI King & Patricia Nguyen with a moderated conversation facilitated by Po'Chop|Jenn Freeman.

In Fruitful Devotion (2023), dance choreographer and Columbia College alum Kierah KIKI King (b. 1998 Hartford, CT) explores ideas of body and self-intimacy through a lens of Black Queerness, observing and understanding how to authentically love. Patricia Nguyen’s (b. 1987, Chicago, IL) newest sensorial experimentation and haptic performance work Creating Worlds with My Mother (2023) features the artist and her mother, Thuy Ta, exploring the aftermath of war, inherited trauma, intergenerational healing, refugee resettlement, and queer worldmaking.