UCR Department of Dance

New Research in Critical Dance Studies Colloquium Series

Towards Antiracist Futures of Dance in the Post-Pandemic Academy 

Recently, dance organizations and institutions across the country have pronounced themselves in different forms against historical social and racial injustice. They have drafted values intended to prompt commitments to fighting against systemic racism and social marginalization. The colloquium and the Schlundt Lecture are motivated by the premise that in order to implement structural changes there must be a radical change on how we have learned to think, be, feel, care, do, and make in the world and in relation to one another. Presenters will be sharing their radical imagination as we keep the fire burning and the momentum going toward envisioning and building a more equitable and antiracist (dance) world.

Coordinated by Jose L Reynoso
Assistant Professor of Critical Dance Studies

MAY 27, 2021 Thursday, 1:30-3:20 pm PDT 
ONLINE - Free and open to the campus and broader community

Register in advance for this series (one link for all presentations): 
https://ucr.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMrd-uvqDMqHNT24cUrjoAOV6jJ4lSGa9pq 
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining the presentation. 

Download the interactive poster here.

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The Christena Lindborg Schlundt Lecture in Critical Dance Studies and Dance Making

Brenda Dixon Gottschild (she/her/hers)

“SANKOFA/OUROBOROS/PHOENIX – RECKONING WITH RACE” 

“We can’t know how American we are unless we know how Black we are.” 

So said the legendary Robert Farris Thompson in one of his iconic teaching moments. Such a conceit challenges the racial virus that is dreadlocked in America’s marrow, releasing a venom that rages on and on. Thompson’s sentence raises basic ontological questions: What can it mean? Where and how does it situate us, somatically, psychologically, intellectually—spiritually? Who are we? Why “us”?

Invoking the concepts of sankofa (Ghana), ouroboros (Egypt) and phoenix (Greece), in tandem with anecdotal evidence and commentary, I ponder some of the knotted “isms” (capitalism, colonialism, chauvinism) that entrap and/or enlighten us as we reckon with my focus—namely, racism. 

Brenda Dixon Gottschild is the author of Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts; Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era (winner of the 2001 Congress on Research in Dance Award for Outstanding Scholarly Dance Publication); The Black Dancing Body–A Geography from Coon to Cool (winner, 2004 de la Torre Bueno prize for scholarly excellence in dance publication); and Joan Myers Brown and The Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina-A Biohistory of American Performance.  

Additional honors include the Congress on Research in Dance Award for Outstanding Leadership in Dance Research (2008); a Leeway Foundation Transformation Grant (2009); the International Association for Blacks in Dance Outstanding Scholar Award  (2013); the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus Civil Rights Award (2016); and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2017).

A self-described anti-racist cultural worker utilizing dance as her medium, she is a freelance writer, consultant, performer, and lecturer; a former consultant and writer for Dance Magazine; and Professor Emerita of dance studies, Temple University.  As an artist-scholar she coined the phrase, “choreography for the page,” to describe her embodied, subjunctive approach to research writing. 

Nationwide and abroad she curates post-performance reflexive dialogues, writes critical performance essays, performs self-created solos, and collaborates with her husband, choreographer/dancer Hellmut Gottschild, in a genre they developed and titled “movement theater discourse.
www.bdixongottschild.com and Facebook.

This award and lecture, in honor of the founder of doctoral studies in dance in the UC system, Professor Emerita Schlundt, is made possible by the Christena Lindborg Schlundt Endowed Fund for the support of Periodic Lectures on Research in Dance History and Theory. 

This series is supported by the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Dean’s Office Visiting Artist Fund.

Information: dance@ucr.edu 

Learn more about series here

As we strive to constantly renew our commitments to social and racial justice as a department, we acknowledge and recognize our responsibility to the original and current caretakers of the land where UC Riverside is located:  The Cahuilla, Tongva, Luiseño, and Serrano peoples (see full land acknowledgement). The life of our department and the upkeep of our facilities are maintained by the labor of so many people we are grateful for. Special thanks to Kathleen DeAtley, Program Promotions Manager, and Lily Chan Szeto, Event Specialist, for contributing their expertise to the production of this Colloquium and Schlundt lecture. 

Photo credit: Ryan Collerd. Pew Center For Arts & Heritage