Generative Dancing Roundtables is a series of hybrid talks developed in partnership between VCA Dance at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music and Dancehouse. These facilitated conversations bring together dance practitioners and thinkers across live and virtual spaces and will later be edited into a series podcast. The Roundtables invite generative investigations of current choreographic practices, challenges and interrogations. They will foster inter-generational dialogue and exchange between dancers, choreographers and pedagogues working across a diversity of genres, bodies and politics.

This year’s series follows the successful launch of the series in 2022 with (In)corporeal Encounters: Proposing Choreographies for the Future.

Generative Dancing Roundtables are co-curated by Carol Brown and Philipa Rothfield assisted by Angela Conquet.

Generative Dancing #1: Glocal Street Dance Cultures in Australia

How can we think about the relationship between the (g)localised dance culture and its black cultural roots? What place does it occupy within Australia or within different cities in Australia? How does it afford its practitioners a sense of belonging to a local as well as global dance community? What are the challenges and tensions inherent in this dynamic? A podcast on what it means to belong to, practice, be part of local Street Dance / Hip Hop cultures, or Street Dance / Hip Hop scenes in Australia with Amelia Duong, Rachael Gunn and Efren Pamilacan in conversation with Julie Ann Minaai and Elena Benthaus.

A podcast jointly produced by Dancehouse and Victoria College of the Arts Dance.

Generative Dancing #2: Place-Based Corporeal Activisms

A conversation bringing into focus two examples of place-based corporeal activisms from India and Aotearoa New Zealand. Prarthana will be discussing her concept of ‘corpo-activism’ in relation to the performance-based social justice movement of a group of cis and transgendered sex-work activists, Komal Gandhar (Kolkata). As the cultural wing of Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), the largest sex-worker’s collective in eastern India, Komal Gandhar activists use dance, drama and street performances to lobby for decriminalising sex workers in India, fight against gender-based violence, and advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. The talk will map the afterlife of historic colonial-era legislations around dance work and sex work that continue to haunt racialised-minoritised communities in eastern India. Tia will talk into indigenous agencies of belonging, where place is often engulfed by Eurocentric ideologies. Advancing place based praxis as a means to unsettle ‘historical amnesia’, her intercultural pedagogy recentres the often fragile yet resilient localities of indigeneity, in particular, the development of her framework “te mana Motuhake o te Kauri” (the authority of the Kauri tree) that encompasses Kaupapa Māori theories and methodologies that responsive to place-based/practise led research.

Speakers:

Dr. Tia Reihana (Ngāti Hine) is a Senior lecturer in Dance Studies at Waipapa Taumata Rau, The University of Auckland. Dr Reihana works extensively in Arts, Education and Health with Indigenous communities in Aotearoa and the wider Pacific. She is the co-director of the newly established Centre for Co-Created Ageing Research (CREATE-AGE) at the University of Auckland.

Dr. Prarthana Purkayastha is Reader in Dance and Performance Studies at Royal Holloway University of London. She is the author of Indian Modern Dance, Feminism and Transnationalism (2014). Her forthcoming book is The Archives and Afterlives of Nautch Dancers in India with Cambridge University Press.

Facilitator:

Dr Amaara Raheem is a dance-artist, researcher, writer and curator. Amaara holds a PhD by practice from the School of Architecture and Urban Design (RMIT University) and is a part-time Lecturer at VCA Dance. Amaara is co-editor of Choreographic Practices Journal and sits on the Artistic Directorate for Next Wave.