Dates:
Wed 12 Nov 2025 1:30pm
Running time: 3 Hours 30 Minutes
Age:
Tickets: £0.00
About
TOWARDS A DANCE COMMONS – A FORUM FOR CROSS-COMMUNITY SHARING
Durham University and Dance City Event
Community is as much an ideal people strive towards as an actual fact. Community making is a crucial part of democratic society; it helps avoid harmful conflicts and repair inequalities. Dance assumes a special place in community building. To be a great dancer, it is not only about individual dancing, it is about how to compromise, to listen and to come together in a common endeavour in a cooperative way. Happening in spaces that are both open (‘brave’ space) and protected (‘safe’ space), dance promotes inclusion and offers new models of what a community can be. Projects developed in the frame of community dance can tackle marginalisation, inequality, exclusion, forge social engagement, and heal trauma. We propose a forum at which scholars, dance practitioners and community dancers across the North East exchange knowledge and experience about community making in the context of dance. Grounding the event in interdisciplinary research on embodiment and cognition, affect and trauma, dance and performance, we will engage a range of distinct communities to explore how they share through sequences of embodied movement, gesture, and touch.
Day 1: 12 November, Dance City
13:30-14:00 Registration
14:00-15:00 Welcome, introduction and a talk, ‘Why movement matters’, by Roger Smith (in the theatre)
15:00-17:00 Parallel events:
• Every body dancing: ‘Can one define a gracious movement?’ workshop of Isadora Duncan with Irina Sirotkina; ‘What a pity that you exclude us: your dance is boring’, workshop focused on larger bodies, with Gillie Kleiman (Theatre)
• Open rehearsal of BA students (Studio 2)
*Participants can choose between activity in the Theatre or Studio 2
This event is free, but capacity is limited and booking is essential
Durham University and Dance City Event
Community is as much an ideal people strive towards as an actual fact. Community making is a crucial part of democratic society; it helps avoid harmful conflicts and repair inequalities. Dance assumes a special place in community building. To be a great dancer, it is not only about individual dancing, it is about how to compromise, to listen and to come together in a common endeavour in a cooperative way. Happening in spaces that are both open (‘brave’ space) and protected (‘safe’ space), dance promotes inclusion and offers new models of what a community can be. Projects developed in the frame of community dance can tackle marginalisation, inequality, exclusion, forge social engagement, and heal trauma. We propose a forum at which scholars, dance practitioners and community dancers across the North East exchange knowledge and experience about community making in the context of dance. Grounding the event in interdisciplinary research on embodiment and cognition, affect and trauma, dance and performance, we will engage a range of distinct communities to explore how they share through sequences of embodied movement, gesture, and touch.
Day 1: 12 November, Dance City
13:30-14:00 Registration
14:00-15:00 Welcome, introduction and a talk, ‘Why movement matters’, by Roger Smith (in the theatre)
15:00-17:00 Parallel events:
• Every body dancing: ‘Can one define a gracious movement?’ workshop of Isadora Duncan with Irina Sirotkina; ‘What a pity that you exclude us: your dance is boring’, workshop focused on larger bodies, with Gillie Kleiman (Theatre)
• Open rehearsal of BA students (Studio 2)
*Participants can choose between activity in the Theatre or Studio 2
This event is free, but capacity is limited and booking is essential
