Symposium Dancing Diaspora: Exploring European Contemporary Dance through the lens of diaspora
PRACTICAL
Thursday 18 April 13:30 — 18:00
STUK Auditorium
Language: English
The symposium is free of charge but registration is required.
Cultural Studies (KU Leuven) and STUK House for Dance, Image & Sound are co-organizing "Dancing Diaspora," a symposium aimed at bringing together dance scholars, practitioners, and interested audiences to explore the intersection of dance, choreography and diaspora cultures.
Despite its outward appearance of neutrality and inclusiveness, European contemporary dance has a historical pattern of excluding choreographic styles from diverse cultural and geographical backgrounds, as well as popular dance forms rooted in culturally diverse communities. However, over the past decade, choreographers of color have been increasingly asserting their presence in the European dance scene. Drawing from their diverse cultural experiences, these choreographers have introduced innovative approaches and highlighted often overlooked aesthetics and embodied knowledge.
During "Diaspora Dance" we will closely examine the aesthetic strategies employed by these choreographers and analyze how they challenge and deconstruct the label of "Contemporary Dance." Our goal is to not only explore how diaspora choreographers disrupt traditional dance conventions but also to investigate their ability to create – or fabulate – counter-narratives that critically reassess how we conceptualize dance and choreography as a discipline.
Speakers: Tavia Nyong’o, Tundé Adefioye and Layla Zami.
Oxana Chi and Layla Zami will close the symposium with their performance Corpuscular Cores.
Tavia Nyong’o is Chair and William Lampson Professor of Performance Studies; American Studies; African-American Studies; and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Yale University. His books include The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) and Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (New York University Press, 2018). His current research interests include: the performative turn in museum curation; the racial reckoning in theater, dance, and performance; racial and sexual dissidence in art and culture; and the cultural history of the metaverse.
Tundé Adefioye, a Nigerian-American based in Belgium, is a performing art dramaturg, writer and lecturer. He co-founded the youth platform Urban Woorden in Leuven and was awarded the Prize for Cultural Education by the Flemish Government. In 2016, he began working as “city-dramaturg” in Brussels. Tundé has done dramaturgy for projects including Malcolm X and (Not) My Paradise. In 2019, he made his directorial debut with Contact Theatre Manchester, with the piece Old Tools > New Masters ≠ New Futures. Additionally, he is a lecturer of Cultural Criticism and US Popular (Black) Visual Culture at Sint-Lucas Antwerp Art college. In 2020 Tundé was co-editor of the VUB Poincaré book Migration, Racism and Equality: 44 Opinions and contributed an epilogue to the Routledge published Staging Slavery: Performances of Colonial Slavery and Race from International Perspectives, 1770-1850. At the end of 2020, Tundé began with a concept with young racialized people that would at the beginning of 2021 become Braver Spaces Antwerp. Since then, Tundé has helped with co-coordinating two international Summer Schools/camps for young people. In 2023, Tundé was the dramaturg for the plant procession that was spearheaded and conceived by artist and professor Wendy Morris. Additionally, Tundé served as theoretical dramaturg for Milø Slayers, choreographic conception DEMONstratio.
Layla Zami is an interdisciplinary academic and artist, whose work orbits around the nexus of cultural memory, performance, diaspora, language, and spacetime. She is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Performance Studies at Freie Universität Berlin (Collaborative Research Center Intervening Arts). Zami spent several years in New York, where she was Adj. Associate Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Co-Chair of Black Lives Matter at Pratt Institute. The author of Contemporary PerforMemory: Dancing Through Spacetime, Historical Trauma, and Diaspora in the 21st Century (Oscar G. Brockett Prize for Dance Research Honorable Mention 2023), she obtained her PhD in Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Humboldt-University, where she also earned a Teaching Award, and was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. Zami graduated from Sciences Po Paris and holds a Diploma in Classical Saxophone. She studied jazz with Parageet and Fuasi Abdul-Khaliq, and played in the Big Band of the Berlin University of the Arts. As a Resident Artist with Oxana Chi Dance & Art, Zami accompanies the choreographies with music, spoken words, theater, presentations and more.
Oxana Chi is a German dancer, choreographer, curator, writer, filmmaker, and trendsetter. Her work explores how our present is built upon in/visible remnants from the past, and its porous relation to our futures. She founded her company in Berlin in 1991 and was based in New York for several years. Her rich repertoire of 20+ productions comprises commissioned works for Humboldt-University, The Kitchen NYC, and Leo-Baeck-Institute (Transitions Festival). Keynote performance invitations include Black German Heritage & Research Association (University of Toronto, 2018) and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (2024). Honors and awards include: Performance Studies international Award (2023), Ambassador of Peace DOSHIMA Jakarta (2016), and being listed in The Dance Enthusiast’s A to Z of People Who Power the Dance World (NYC 2018). As a filmmaker, Chi produced the film Dancing Through Gardens with support from the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah (Paris). She published writing with Orlanda Frauenverlag, transcript Publishing, and Dance Research Journal. Residencies have included Abrons Arts Center AIRspace Grant, La Maison Rouge: Maison des Arts, The Brick New York, JCAL New York, and Cité des Arts Paris. She curated programs such as the Moving Memory Symposium Festival (TU Berlin) and the TANZnews series (Werkstatt der Kulturen), and was a Curator of Dance for the International Human Rights Art Festival in NYC. Chi has 30+ experience as an educator and was a 2022 guest faculty in the Dance Department at New York University.
This symposium is a collaboration between STUK and Cultural Studies, KU Leuven. It is a part of the "Contemporary Dance & Dance Studies'' course, initiated under the cultural policy plan of KU Leuven.
The Centre for Cultural Studies (KU Leuven) is a member of CoDA - Cultures of Dance, a Research Network for Dance Studies funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO).
