Writing Dance Workshop [2019-20]

About

What Do We Write About When We Write About Dance?

The programme of the first year of the Cambridge Writing Dance Workshop explores questions of dance and writing: what do we write about when we write about dance, and how do we write about it? How do historical context, theoretical approaches, and the danced event relate to each other in our work? Does our dance writing differ from our writing on literature and culture, and if so, why? What kind of vocabularies are we using, and is there potential for expansion? We will be learning from each other’s expertise, and from invited speakers from the fields of dance criticism and dance studies. The focus on ‘writing dance’ will culminate in a one-day symposium on ‘dancing text’. It is envisaged that the methodological explorations of the first year of the group will lead to a more topic-based programme for a potential second year.  

One of the group’s aims is to bring discourse about social dance (so often ephemeral, dispersed, casual, non-academic, of marginal groups, found in memoirs, song lyrics, oral histories, in corners of fiction or film, or unexpected digressions in essays about other things) into proximity with discussions of performed dance and the sorts of formal notation it has brought into being.  In this way we hope to expand the available methodologies of writing dance and dance writing.

If you would like to attend and register or further information, please click here to contact the convenors.

Administrative assistance: networks@crassh.cam.ac.uk