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.