Location: Zoom Room 2
Zoom Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/6087153816?pwd=ppMzS6CF8VMyDMKcF9DX0BiTTC3Exf.1
Abstract:
Training(isms): cross-disciplinary exchanges on practice-based pedagogies
“Touch at a Distance: Examining Equity, Agency, and Consent in Virtual Movement-Based Training Practices”, is a postdoctoral SSHRC/Sport Canada funded interdisciplinary project that proposes a systematic examination of coaching pedagogies in Canadian sports and arts-based training practices. My research considers questions surrounding agency and the virtuosic body, consent, and the life-long effects to the physical and emotional well-being of the performer.
Growing up training as a rhythmic gymnast and musician, I could not have imagined some of the physical and emotional scars that would continue to follow me throughout my life from my childhood pursuit of virtuosic/conservatory training. As a gymnastics coach and arts-based educator/scholar countering harmful training practices, my pedagogy has been informed by autotheory, auto/ethnography, and testimonies from former athletes/artists denouncing the toxic culture of silence that has proven prevalent in virtuosic/conservatory training spaces.
My research’s premise implores safe and equitable practices surrounding consent, agency, and touch within these rigorous training disciplines through interdisciplinary exchanges and knowledge mobilization. As such, I propose this roundtable that brings together cross-disciplinary voices from a variety of sports and arts-based scholars (dance, sport, music, stage).
Some topics to be explored during the round table:
-Overlaps in training practices in dance, performance studies, circus arts, music, aesthetic sports
-Unique pedagogical considerations for body-centric training
-The systematic breakdown of the virtuosic body
-Consent and virtuosic training
-Training and touch: “Touch at a distance”
-Sustainability, wellness, and the performing body
T. Nikki Cesare-Schotzko
Alana Gerecke
Amir Haidar
Lyra McKee
Maria Meindl
Milena Pereira
Sarah Robbins
Jessica Watkin
Biographies:
Based in Vancouver, on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh nations, Alana Gereckeis a performance scholar and artist of mixed European descent. She teaches at Capilano University. Her research on the social and spatial potentials of urban choreographies feeds her writing, teaching, performance making, and parenting.
Amir Haidar is a Lebanese-Canadian performer, instructor, and PhD candidate based in Toronto. He has been working as an actor in theatre and music theatre for the last fifteen years, teaching acting and vocal performance at Sheridan College, and is currently writing his thesis on Lebanese musicals and their relationship to the Lebanese civil war.
Christine Mazumdar is an interdisciplinary artist and SSHRC/Sport Canada Postdoctoral Fellow at the department of Art Education at Concordia University where her research considers the interrelationship between sport and art. A former rhythmic gymnast and coach, her work advocates consent, agency, and bodily autonomy in aesthetic pedagogies.
Lyra A. McKee (she/her) is in the final term of her M.A. at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. She holds a previous M.A. in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice from UBC (2018) and a B.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies from Dartmouth College (2015). Lyra’s research interests include trans/gender studies, feminist political philosophy, theatre and performance studies, among others.
Maria Meindl writes fiction and non-fiction, organizes literary readings and teaches Feldenkrais technique. Based on her research on the Berlin-based movement teacher Elsa Gindler (1885-1961) she offers a series of webinars on the history of mind/body techniques and performer-training methods. www.mariameindl.com
Milena Pereira is a PhD student in the Humanities Program at Concordia University, Canada. Her current research focuses on virtuosity in the circus in Quebec in the 21st century. She studied dance at the University of Campinas, Brazil, where she also completed a MA in Performing Arts. In parallel, she discovered the circus and became an aerialist. She has contributed as a performer, movement director and dramaturge to circus, dance, theatre and interdisciplinary performances in Brazil and Canada.
Sarah Robbins is an artist-scholar specializing in actor training, collaborative creation, and equity-driven transformation of theatre institutions. Currently, she is the Project Manager for the SSHRC-funded Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories of Performance partnership project, and is co-editing the forthcoming Gatherings volume with Playwrights Canada Press. Her work has been published in Canadian Theatre Review, Intermission Magazine, HowlRound Theatre Commons, and alt.theatre magazine.