Re:generations Final Day

The final day at the conference started with the host reminding us to reflect over the past three days, to think over what had gone right for us and what kind of experience are we taking away with us, be it positive or negative. Even though the theme was dance and the digital age, I felt that it was about the connection with each other and how the digital space has extended that. The theory is still that we might lose the essence of human connection, but we can work on preventing that.

For our keynote speaker, we had Amanda Spann and Dr Sharon Watson who facilitated. The subject of the talk was ’Algorithms in Alignment: How to leverage technology to build buy-in brand engagement and boost business in the world of dance’. Amanda builds brands and invests in startups. Before taking us through her presentation she established three things that we are to acknowledge; 1. I am worthy 2. The world is abundant 3. I am ready to receive. A piece of advice Amanda gave was ’to not really think about the tools but more about the impact’. I found this sentence somewhat inspire me and my thought process. I thought Amanda was intelligent on her subject and had great charisma that responded well with the audience. Amanda presented advice on using AirBnB experiences as a way to generate revenue, and how finding high ranking keywords to increase views and help find the right audience on Youtube. Overall I found the keynote interesting as the ideas that were discussed I don't think I could think up myself. Also, Amanda had no performance background so her perspective on how to drum up business was refreshing.

Later on in the day, I chose to attend ’The Body As Archive in the Digital Age’, this would be split into three different presentations on the subject title. Dr Adesola Akinleye and Harry Fulleylove presenting ’The last place they thought of: dancing cartography of black woman’s spaces’ was the first of the three. Adesola introduced this presentation as a movement paper, using projections, shadows, lights and her body to create a physical space in order to share her analysis of her research with architects and engineer about ’the black female body in the city’ envisaging the body in a city space. Adesola talks about how her body is not often designed for and how we affect the space around with the shadows we make and the felt experience in that space.

The second presentation was by Gesel Mason, who spoke about ’No Boundaries: A Journey to Embody and Archive the Work of Black Choreographers’. Gesel spoke of a performance she had put together, an evolving repertoire of solos choreographed by some of the United States’s leading contemporary African American choreographers. The project featured work by Kyle Abraham, Robert Battle, Rennie Harris, Diane McIntyre, Bebe Miller, Donald McKayle, Reggie Wilson, Andrea Woods, David Rousseve and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. This project was created in 2004 in a way to celebrate the diversity of style. Some id the dances we're choreographed from the year 1940 to the present day, and some of the dances we're created especially for the project. We watched a few minutes of a documentary made for this project which showed short clips of the dances with interviews with the choreographers and experts in dance and the African Diaspora. 

For the final presentation, Molly Christie Gonzalez presented ’Dance as a Social Act: The Pedagogy of Kathrine Dunham Technique and Philosophies. Molly was a student of Katherine Dunham and was a certified teacher of the Dunham technique, Molly introduced herself as a Dunham student, teacher and scholar. Katherine Dunham was an artist, anthropologist, educator, activist, scholar and humanist, born in 1909 and died in 2006. Katherine Dunham once said ”When I founded the Dunham school, the curriculum was often criticised. Why the teaching of the humanities, philosophy, languages, aesthetics, as well as the Dunham technique? I believe these things are necessary for the complete person, and so to be the complete dancer I could not simply teach dance”. Rather than separating the arts or artist from society Dunham believed that the arts had a social power to connect to different cultures and to build communities. Listen to this presentation about Katherine Dunham I found it fascinating and I agree with her thoughts and teaching involving socialisation through the arts. I believe Dunham will become useful to research in the next term when I want to look at subjects surrounding diversity.

This conference has been a great opportunity for me to learn a lot about the African Diaspora and how I might fit into that community. There's a lot of information that I'm still processing from the three days, I know it would take me some time to understand everything I attended but I look forward to expanding the knowledge I've acquired in my research and my reflection on my cultural identity.

Re:generations Day Two

Today was the second day at Re:generations and our keynote speaker today was Dr Thomas F. DeFranz, and Dr Adesola Akinleye was the facilitator. Thomas chose to present ‘Dancing The Afrofuture’ and presented this using the projector and changing the pitch of his voice to create an atmosphere. Thomas is a great speaker and he knows his subject, but I’ll have to be honest I feel the subject was a bit complex for me to listen to for an hour, process that information and then go to a different talk with a different subject. After the keynote I did have to take a break as I had unexpectedly been contacted by work and had to take some time to sort my work out.

I found today to be more verbal and felt more talked at, rather than yesterday where there was a bit more practical master classes. For someone, like me, who isn’t an expert on the theme of the conference I probably would have done better with a session or two that was aimed at people who aren’t as clued up as the experts. I did struggle today as I find it difficult to process spoken information and retain that info, and then be given more information on top of that.

Following lunch, I attended Matt Wyon’s ‘Wearable Technologies and Dance Data Management Systems’ where Matt did a presentation on ‘Injury and Physiological demands of Hip-Hop and Breakdancing’. I found this session really interesting and would be eager to look more in to this research undertaken by the University of Wolverhampton. We were shown some equipment that is used in the research and results that were recently taken. This is a topic I would perhaps like to look at after this conference.

To end the day there was a international mixed bill showcase featuring Nafisah Baba (UK), Ballet Creole (Toronto, Canada), Joel D. Lane and Munir Zakee (USA), Project X (UK) and Tribhangi Dance Theatre (South Africa). These were an extremely talented group, showing the beauty in different dance genres. There will be a second showcase tomorrow featuring different talent and I throughly look forward to this, as I feel a physical presentation is just as important as a verbal session.

Re:generations Conference Day 1

Today I attended Re:generations Conference, ’Dance and the Digital Space’ International perspectives in dance of the African Diaspora, with another Middlesex student who I’m rooming with at the nearby hotel, Scarlett. The day started with an opening ceremony, performed by Dr H Patten and Peter Badejo OBE, who led us to a large room for the keynote address by Karen Gallagher MB. It was here where Karen introduced the theme of the event, Dance and the Digital Space and talked about digital manipulation. I have danced for many years but I don’t identify as a strong dancer nor have I thought about how it would work in the digital space, so coming to this event is a way for me to be able to dive headfirst into a community I don’t fully comprehend and immersive myself on a promising educational journey.  

After the keynote, there were different talks available for the first breakout session. I chose to attend ’Using the Digital Age to tell the Human Stories of Dance’ led by Gonzalo Preciado-Azanza, Dr Adesola Akinleye and Louise Katerega, facilitated by Vivine Scarlett. Gonzalo, over Skype, and Adesola started the presentation of their work presenting ’A Quarreling Pair (2007)’ by Bill T. Jones in a reference in dance and the digital age. Gonzalo is a former Middlesex student who was taught by Adesola and after graduation they started working together exploring algorithms and asking ”how artists are using new technology?” and in this wanting to learn how far away from the skin can technology pick up movement, interestingly enough Adesola and Gonzalo have only met in person once or twice and have talked and conducted research over Skype, inherently showing how important the development of technology has come.

Following this, Louise presents ’The Voice and Presence Survey – Women of the African Disapora in Participatory Dance’ in this Louise showed us how she collected data in a snapshot research study using SurveyMonkey. We were showed the results of this research, talked about owning the discourse and how we need to give ourselves permission to be artistic.

After a lunch break, I made my way over to attend ’Visibility and Representation on Screen’ presented by Susannah Simons and Ghislaine and facilitating by Dr Sharon Watson. These industry experts shared their experience and work enhanced by technologies to produce live and recorded mid-scale to mad productions. Susannah is a director of partnerships to Marquee TV, they are taking dance out of the confines of the stage and distributing stage performances worldwide. They are capturing existing works and extending their life beyond a live run. A review of this which I find quite accurate is that ’Marquee TV is Netflix for Performing Arts’. Ghislaine followed this and discussed devising work for human-led tech interactions and how a complex back end equals a simple front end.

To end the day I went to an African Drumming Masterclass led by Dr Sylvanus Kwashie Kuwor, which I was highly looking forward too. During this session, we were taught several rhythms, a song and were invited to dance. For me, this is the first time I felt like I connected with what was being taught and talked about. We talked about how African people are connected through life with music and sound, and I truly felt with within this session. We viewed each other as brother and sister and connected through the vibrations we created. As someone from a mixed heritage background and having no interaction with my Caribbean and African side, being told by Sylvanus that we were the future, that we were connecting with our ancestors and we’re able to pass what we have learnt on was incredibly comforting.

There has been a lot of information giving today and processing it has been quite difficult, I am glad that I was able to take away a positive feeling and memory that I will remember and use in my future work.

Quote of the day: “If we know where we come from, we know how to go forward”