Fun and funny but not frivolous. Join us for a part dance party, part celebration of “lesbian dance theory”. An event, here at Dancehouse, for hosting people and ideas committed to the interlinked, anti-oppression of LGBTQIA+ people and ideas.

This dance party is inspired by a spontaneous happening at the global dance network, Dance Studies Association in 2022. A danced response to political attacks in the US congress about paying tax for ‘”Karen’s daughter’s degree in lesbian dance theory.”

Also always, a party for lesbian dance theory is a party for blak and queer communities and a critique of how whiteness polices dancing bodies and academic spaces. And, at challenging times, a dance party provides spaces and moments for collective joy. So, let’s bring scholarship to the party (and vice versa).

With DJ’s music, drinks, and queer dance readings, let’s dance out the year that was 2023.

DJ: Old Hag & Pillow Princess

Artists and readers: Alyson Campbell, Anne Marsh, Liam Berg, Shri T., Ebony Muller, Phillip Adams and Megan Beckwith

Music from the Lesbian/Dance/Theory playlist

Readings include excerpts from:
Clare Croft, ‘”I’m gay,” she never said’ (Brooklyn Rail, 2017)
Jonathan Bollen, ‘Queer kinaesthesia: Performativity on the dance floor’, in Jane Desmond’s Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities on and off the stage (University of Wisconsin, 2001)
Harmony Bench, Perpetual Motion: Dance, Digital Cultures, and the Common (University of Minnesota Press, 2020)
Ariel Osterweis, Disciplining Black Swan, Animalizing Ambition (Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen, 2014)
Raquel Monroe ‘”Oh No! Not This Lesbian Again!”: The Punany Poets Queer the Pimp-Ho Aesthetic’ (Queer Dance, 2017)
Susan Leigh Foster, ‘Choreographies of Gender’ (Signs, 1998)

All proceeds go to Forcibly Displaced People Network (FDPN):

Forcibly Displaced People Network (FDPN) is the first registered LGBTIQ+ refugee-led organisation in Australia. We work to support LGBTIQ+ people seeking asylum, refugees and migrants from non-Western countries to be safe in Australia. FDPN is established to promote human rights and inclusion of LGBTIQ+ persons in forced displacement through peer support and strengthening services and policy responses.