NEXT UP:
Jacob Zimmer talks out questions of emotion, affect and a populism that he can stand behind. He also trie to articulate some strategies that have been emerging in making shows with Small Wooden Shoe and in working with Dancemakers and Public Recordings.
This will include some singing and guitar playing with a story of Cape Breton Island and workers revolt.
A Freemind talk followed by a discussion.
Thursday December 13th - 6:30
Dancemakers' Michael J. Baker Studio
in the Distillery
(the Christmas Market is on - there is a lot of people and parking is a challenge. You've been warned)
About Thinking Out Loud - The Study Group
Thinking Out Loud responds to our desire to read, watch, listen and talk together. To create a space in Toronto for a meeting between contemporary dance and contemporary thinking in an open, casual and critically supportive environment. It is a response to the lack of structured group learning after (or maybe even during) our formal training.
And all of this in an environment that includes snacks and beverages of varying types.
We encourage any and all to join us, regardless of experience level or background. Please note that the Study Group is always free. We like people from other fields (art, social sciences etc...) and we know that for many people this could be a very new thing. We will try to keep all of this in mind. All we ask for is a curiosity and willingness to participate.
At each meeting we introduce a topic through a close reading of an article and a discussion of the relationship to art making - with specific attention paid to dance and performance.
Thinking Out Loud – a Study Group is presented in partnership with The Dance Current.
Previous Study Group Sessions
Wednesday April 11 – Presentation - Carl Wilson on taste
Carl Wilson, an editor and critic at The Globe and Mail in Toronto, Canada, and the author of Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, a book about mass culture, social class, aesthetic judgment and Celine Dion in the 33 1/3 Series from Continuum Books (New York).
His most regular online writing now is at Back to the World, a group blog with Margaux Williamson and Chris Randle.
Carl’s writing has appeared or is upcoming in The New York Times, Slate, Blender, Pitchfork, The Nation, Saturday Night, En Route, This Magazine, Hour, C Magazine and elsewhere; he’s twice been republished in the annual Da CapoBest Music Writing anthology. He lives in Toronto, where he helps runTrampoline Hall, the monthly non-expert lecture series at Sneaky Dee’s, and formerly curated the Tin Tin Tin live cross-genre mashup series.
February Study Group - A Theory of Adaptation
Wednesday, February 8 at 6:30pm
In our second lecture-driven edition of Study Group this year, Dancemakers invites noted University of Toronto Professor Linda Hutcheon to talk about her work A Theory of Adaptation.
In her own words, Linda says:
"Are we living in the age of adaptation? In contemporary cinema, of course, there are enough adaptations - based on everything from comic books to the novels of Jane Austen - to make us wonder if Hollywood has run out of new stories. But if you think adaptation can be understood by using novels and films alone, you’re wrong. Today there are also song covers rising up the pop charts, video game versions of fairy tales, and even theme park rides based on successful movie franchises and vice-versa. We constantly tell and retell stories; we show and reshow stories; we interact and re-interact with stories - and these three different modes of engagement (and their interactions) allow us to rethink how adaptation works - and why."
Curious about the implications for contemporary dance in general - and for Dancemakers' new work by Artistic Director Michael Trent specifically, which will premiere in April of this year - this edition of Study Group will look at the critical framework behind the act of adaptation. The lecture will be followed by a conversation with the participants.
About Linda Hutcheon:
Linda Hutcheon is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. A specialist in postmodernist culture and in critical theory, she has published nine books. It is the complex interrelations of theory with artistic practice that form the common thread in her academic work. As one of a generation formed by the so-called "rise of theory" as an independent area of literary study and influenced by her years of interdisciplinary and comparative training in institutions in the United States, Italy, and Canada, she has nonetheless been as interested in what art teaches us about theory as in the reverse.
January Study Group - To end with judgment by way of clarification...
Wednesday January 11 @ 6:30, we'll be reading:
To end with judgment by way of clarification...
A conversation between Bojana Cvejic with Xavier LeRoy
Bojana Cvejic, performance theorist and maker and Xavier LeRoy, choreographer, talk about contemporary dance terminology, specifically, what we might be talking about when we talk about "conceptual dance."
::: Hard copies are available at the Dancemakers office or...
To print via our website : http://www.dancemakers.org/studygroup.html
and also available online here: http://www.mobileacademy-berlin.com/englisch/2006/texte/cvejic03.html
December Study Group - Looking for a Populism To Stand Behind
A talk by Jacob Zimmer followed by a discussion.
Tuesday December 13th, 2011 from 6:30pm-9:30pm
Dancemakers Centre For Creation, Studio 313
A follow up to his work as the Toronto Fringe Festival Research Chair, Zimmer draws on the work of thinkers Ernesto Laclau and Jaques Ranciere plus theatre practitioners like John McGrath and Joan Littlewood to find a relationship to populism.
At Dancemakers, he hopes to consider the place of dance in this discussion and would like to encourage dance artists that engage with populist forms (might include other words like "traditional" "folk" "recreational" "participatory") to attend and help by Thinking Out Loud.
November Study Group - The Emancipated Spectator
We are happy to announce that the next session will occur on Tuesday, November 8th at 6:30 in the Michael J. Baker Studio at the Centre for Creation.
Please join us for a group reading and discussion of Jacques Rancière’s The Emancipated Spectator. (see below for details on how to get a copy.) We’ve looked at this before and feel it deserves more time. It will also be a nice tie in to our December session, a presentation and conversation on populism by Jacob Zimmer.
Download a PDF copy of The Emancipated Spectator HERE
October Study Group with Sara Wookey
For our first meeting of the season, we have invited Los Angeles-based dance artist Sara Wookey to present her lecture/performance Transmitting Dance: How Media, Language and Muscle Memory Collaborate in Capturing and Dissolving Movement, based on her relationship to the seminal 1966 work Trio A by American post-modern pioneer Yvonne Rainer.
About the Presentation
Transmitting Dance is a solo performance-lecture that explores the underlying and specific verbal language, references and musings that Yvonne Rainer engages when transmitting her dance Trio A (1966) from her body to that of another. It explores a methodology behind dance making and transfer through engaging process as material. Sara will discuss and demonstrate her experiences of working with Yvonne Rainer to both learn and become certified to teach her seminal work. She will also present details about Transmitting Trio A, a two-year research project that is part pedagogical tool, part archive and part 3-D art-work that explores and amplifies the transmission process rendering it a visible, tactile and usable tool for dancers and her curating of solo works from the Judson Dance Era for the program reDANCE.
There will be a chance for questions and answers after the presentation. Some areas of inquiry posed by this presentation engage ideas of transmitting dance. How do technologies and systems of transmission, both old and new, mediate the process of learning a dance? What does it mean to re-construct a dance and what are the methods being used and in what combination? How do we evaluate a successful transmitted dance verses one that embraces the loss of translation over time and through bodies? Why the fascination to preserve dance at all?
About Sara Wookey
Sara Wookey is a choreographer interested in socio-spatial relations and the performance of the everyday. In order to explore her interests, she collaborates with visual and performing artists, architects, environmentalists and urban designers within the non-profit, commercial and community sectors. She works between the regions of Southern California, Midwest, Western Europe and Eastern Canada. After returning to the United States from the Netherlands, where she directed her dance company from 1996-2006, her work has been presented at, among others, the REDCAT, Links Hall, Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego. She received her Master of Fine Art from the Department of World Arts & Cultures at the University of California, Los Angles and is a guest artist at the California Institute of the Arts, University of California Irvine and Cal State University Long Beach. She serves on the board of the Southern California Dance Connection and is a founding member of the Choreographer’s Working Group. She is recently certified to perform and to teach Yvonne Rainer’s seminal dance work Trio A and is working on a dance archive project, Transmitting Trio A, that explores language, process and preservation in dance. For more information please visit: http://www.sarawookey.com
