Call for Submissions

Call for Essays & Photos on the theme “Dancing Ecologically”

Submission Date: September 15, 2016

“Nowadays, we’re used to wondering what a [dance] says about race or gender, even if the [dance] makes no explicit mention of race or gender. We will soon be accustomed to wondering what any [dance] says about the environment even if no animals or trees or mountains appear in it.” - Timothy Morton

Utah is located at the heart of public lands debate. With our many state and national parks and monuments, our issue with air quality, our water scarcities, our huge (growing) urban sprawl (and its accompanying social & environmental impacts), and our love for outdoor recreation. Alongside all of these, I see the passion of many local dancemakers to present work outside of the proscenium and build dances on ideas of ‘natural’ body movement. In this time of climate change, ecocide, and environmental racism, in this place, what does it mean to dance about the environment? What does it mean to construct a ‘natural’ body, if anything? From my basement office in Glendale, the environment and dance is a crucial issue to address at this moment. Following the lead of the environmental justice movement, I want to expand the definition of ‘environment’ for this issue to include not just Wild Utah, but also all the places that people live, work, play, dance, and learn here.

Questions addressed could include:

  • When are we dancing about (or with) the environment?
  • Why is site-specific work such a local passion? What does that passion tell us about the environment broadly, and/or the artist’s relationship with it? What is/is there an ethical responsibility when dancing on site?
  • What, if any, is the relationship between site-specific work and environmental issues?
  • What do our dances teach us about our environment? About ecology?
  • What does ecology teach us about our dances?
  • How does popular ideology about nature (e.g. ‘the environment’) create assumptions about ‘natural bodies’? How does the relationship of these ideas impact training and creative work?

Send submissions c/o Editor Liz Ivkovich; liz@lovedancemore.org.

All lengths, styles, and even works-in-progress desired!

 

 

Call for Submissions -- learning to loveDANCEmore

learning to loveDANCEmore, a performance journal

Call for Essays & Photos on the theme “Invisible/Visible”
Submission Date: March 15, 2016

“... in spite of a burgeoning wave of newly minted talent fresh from art schools and universities with direct access to the means of self-representation, the familiar, pyramidal structure of the high culture industry has not only been unfazed, it appears to have become more entrenched than ever before.”

- Gregory Scholette in Dark Matter - Art and Politics in the Age of the Enterprise Culture

When contemplating a theme for volume 12 of the loveDANCEmore performance journal, I considered that there are thousands of dance artists yet the same handful of individuals and companies tour, listing and re-listing one another on their bios. The upcoming journal explores whether this is a reflection of artistic merit (probably) or whether it sparks deeper questions regarding the presentation of concert dance in the contemporary moment (definitely).

The Western concert stage is governed by a growing list of hierarchies; race, gender, sexuality, aesthetic, and geography, to name a few. Funding, employment, institutional support and presentation - the markers of recognition - flow within the boundaries of these hierarchies rendering the labor of many dance artists invisible. There is a growing urgency to critically inquire about this hidden labor of contemporary dance, illustrated by the article “Is Modern Dance a Pyramid Scheme?” and more recently, the controversy surrounding Akram Khan’s comments on female choreographers. These situations spark the following questions :

  1. Who/what bodies is/are represented on the concert dance stage?
  2. Whose labor (of performance, creation, administration, education) is marked invisible; how and why does this happen?
  3. In what ways has the label ‘contemporary’ been defined? Who is included and excluded in that definition?
  4. Most crucially, how do artists disrupt these hierarchies and make their work visible?

In order to explore these issues, most particularly as they impact Salt Lake City, the Mountain West, and other midsize cities in the United States, loveDANCEmore is releasing an open call for submissions.

Submissions could address any of the questions above, or broadly the following topics:

  • hierarchies in contemporary dance
  • definitions of ‘contemporary’
  • ways in which creative labor is made visible

Submissions could be scholarly, storytelling, photos, poetry, or other kinds of content. Please send submissions to Liz Ivkovich, at admin@lovedancemore.org by March 15, 2016.

Thumbnail courtesy of Susan Honer & Gina T'ai, previous journal contributors based in Ohio & Wisconsin.