Dear Colleagues,

Arts Journal invites papers for a Special Issue on Dance, Choreographing Society.

Dance is one of the few mediums distilled with the transparency and trajectory of our social, environmental, political, familial, physical, and psychological experiences. It reflects how we implicitly and explicitly imagine and perceive the societies and communities we dwell in and aspire to create. Dance provides a record of who we are and where we go from here. How are dancers, choreographers and interacting spectators representing, creating, and/or transforming the hybrid, intercultural, and social environments we inhabit? How are artistic activities within individual societies impacted by these ever-changing environs? How can choreographic methodologies facilitate powerful social structures of political and racial activism and forms of resistance? What are the practical, theoretical, and pedagogical approaches to choreographic methodologies and aesthetics that are vulnerable to and challenged by global socio-cultural, political, racial, and commercial forces?

Social Choreography, an emerging interdisciplinary practice-based methodology, seeks to create deeper awareness exploring latent, social, racial, political, and environmental stimuli on the physical and causal body. Operating within the macro- and micro-spheres of the body, it seeks to surface, engage, and transform interactive assumptions about the self, identity, society, and the environment. Social Choreography, therefore, is witness to distinct and dynamic movement cultures expressed through generational representations in the everyday. The choreographic methodology engages the participants’ perception, beliefs, sensual imprints, and experiential knowledge in assembling building-blocks of movement or non-movement as the case may be. How do we utilize social choreography in the age of supersonic technological developments, political resistance, distrust and turbulations, corporate imperialism, racial activism, and insecure livelihoods? How can dance pedagogy inspire younger generations to stretch across and beyond existing movement systems and conceptual frameworks to reimagine collective, transformative, collaborative, and compassionate societies and communities?

Please respond with a 100 word abstract by the deadline sent to the Guest Editor or Dora Wang.

Purnima Shah, Ph.D.
Guest Editor, Special Issue on Dance, Choreographing Society for the journal Arts
Associate Professor of the Practice of Dance
Duke University Dance Program
Rubenstein Arts Center, Suite 209
2020 Campus Drive; Box 90686
Durham, NC 27708
pshahduke.edu

Contact Information:
Dr. Purnima Shah (pshahduke.edu)
Dora Wang (dora.wangmdpi.com)

More information:
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/arts/special_issues/ATSJGLIX95