Screendances for a Diverse World: Social Justice, Equality, and Representation in the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema

Description

Centre for Research in Arts and Creative Exchange (CRACE)
School of Arts, University of Roehampton
“Screendances for a Diverse World: Social Justice, Equality, and Representation in the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema”

*Wednesday, 11th May
Time/space: 3pm-7pm, Sir David Bell Building, Cinema (DB.043) and Atrium (QB.041A)
*This half-day festival aims to raise awareness of existing screendance practices, fostering a forum for conversations with researchers, practitioners, and postgraduate students within the Centre, who are interested in themes of social justice, agency, strategic outreach, and knowledge exchange in the arts.

*Event schedule:
Sir David Bell Cinema
15.00 Welcome; Heike Salzer, Stacey Prickett, Ye Rin Lee
15.00-15.45 Moving Bodies, Social Justice and Choreographic Agency, Stacey Prickett
15.45-16.00 Screening Practice Research PhD, Ye Rin Lee
16.15.17.00 Screening Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema
17.00-17.45 The Evolution of Careful Curation, Discussion with SSF curators Michelle Bernier, Ana Baer, Rosely Conz, Julia Ziviani (online)
17.45-19.00 Informal post screening gathering, coffee/tea roundtable

*Programme details:
Moving Bodies, Social Justice and Choreographic Agency, presentation by Stacey Prickett
Embodied activism takes on many forms, from street protests and civil disobedience movements, to social dance in a city square or choreography created in response to specific social injustices. Screendance has emerged as a vibrant and vital mode of circulating art with activist potential that has a broad reach to marginalised communities alongside viewers in elite institutions. In doing so, the films move bodies on screen and may do so among members of the audience. Analysis of screendances will explore their creative impetus in social justice themes to help achieve a choreographic agency that extends beyond the viewing.

PhD PaR Ye Rin Lee - PhD Research Practice Screendance
Stay Where You Are (2020) / Korea-United Kingdom / Dir. Ye Rin Lee
Stay Where You Are (2020) is about COVID-19 and Zoom (Online conference platform). It describes how people feel during the lockdown and online meetings on Zoom. The screen keeps being divided, changed, and moved by editing based on the dancers’ movements and emotions. The film was created online during the first UK lockdown in 2020.

Screening Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema
As part of its efforts to move toward a more racially just and socially equitable landscape for dance cinema, SSF has strategically curated thematic screenings highlighting artists from communities underrepresented in the field, and from marginalised communities. This screening presents a selection of films contributed by a diverse set of artists: from emerging artists to renown professionals, geographically and racially diverse, and representing several dance forms and approaches to dance filmmaking.
http://sanssoucifestival.org/ssf-roehampton-2022/

The Evolution of Careful Curation
A live online Q&A/discussion with curators of the Sans Souci Festival discussing the challenges and successes of strategically growing the Sans Souci Festival, especially with the Brazilian edition. The conversation will focus on the implementation of policies that have expanded the reach and participation of communities, artists, and audiences, giving exposure to works that are diverse in their themes, creators, production values, representation, etc. We will address SSF’s vision of enacting policies that move toward a more racially just and socially equitable landscape for dance cinema, holding accountability to those standards, and making dance cinema accessible to more audiences.

*Biographies:
Michelle Bernier, MFA, is a dancer, educator, and filmmaker living in Denver, Colorado (USA). She holds a BA in Philosophy summa cum laude from the University of Southern Maine, and an MFA in Dance from the University of Colorado Boulder, with a focus in digital media. Bernier has lectured on screendance at Universidad de Campinas (SP, Brazil), Texas State University, California Institute of the Arts, University of Colorado Boulder, National Dance Educators Organization, and Dance Studies Association; her choreographic residencies include Texas State University, Colorado Mesa University, and Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her films have been screened at ADF’s Movies by Movers, Screendance Festival, and more. She serves on faculty at Metropolitan State University of Denver and Colorado Conservatory of Dance, and as Executive Director and Artistic Co-Director of SSF since 2015.

Ana Baer Carrillo, MFA, is a Mexican video-choreographer living in the US since 2000. She has been co-directing SSF since 2004. Internationally active since 1990, her work has been produced in America, Asia and Europe by dance, film and screendance festivals, as well as by galleries, museums and institutions of higher education. In 2014 she co-founded WECreate Productions with Heike Salzer to further explore themes of identity, the body, and site-specificity through artistic collaboration. Baer Carrillo is currently on faculty at Texas State University researching connections between camera, environment, body and culture with an interdisciplinary approach.

Rosely Conz, MA, MFA, is a Brazilian dancer, filmmaker, choreographer, and educator. Her screendances have been presented in Ireland, Barbados, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, and in many states in the US. Since 2018, Rosely has been a curator for SSF and helped produce the two Brazilian editions of the festival in 2019 and 2020. Presently, Rosely is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Alma College where she continues researching how dance and screendance can address issues of immigration and displacement. As a member of the Board of Directors for Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema, Rosely serves on the Curation Panel and Funding/Support Team.

Ye Rin Lee (@yenn_dance) is a Korean traditional dancer and screendance artist based in London (UK) and Seoul (South Korea). She has been creating diverse dance performances and screendance, dealing with social and political issues. Yerin studied Korean traditional dance for about 20 years, and she has been performing and teaching a traditional performance in different cities in the UK. In 2016, she studied MA Creative and Culture Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths, University of London and created her dance project team named ‘Y Dance’. Currently, she is completing her PhD about political and social performance in screendance with traditional Korean concepts at the University of Roehampton.

Stacey Prickett, PhD, is a Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Roehampton where she supervises PhD students and previously lectured in dance criticism, contextual studies, and dance, politics and sociology. Her research investigates the social and political contexts of diverse dance and performance practices in the US and the UK. She published Embodied Politics: Dance, Protest and Identities (2013), has written book chapters and numerous articles for dance journals, and co-edited the Routledge Companion to Dance Studies (2020). Stacey served on the boards of dance scholar organisations in the US and the UK, and edited book reviews for Dance Research Journal. She chairs the Board of Directors of the Sonia Sabri Company in Birmingham.

Heike Salzer, PhD, MA is a German dance artist fluidly operating in performance, choreography and site specific screendance. Her work has been internationally invited to numerous festivals, venues and organisations. In 2014, together with Ana Baer Carrillo, Heike founded WECreate Productions, producing collaboratively site-specific screendances, multi-media performances, and installations. She is Senior Lecturer in Dance Professional Practice at the University of Roehampton in London, where she convenes the MFA Dance and Embodied Practice. Heike is Secretary of the Board of Directors for Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema, and serves on the Curation Panel and Programming and Events Team.

Julia Ziviani Vitello, PhD, is a dancer and choreographer, who danced at the Ballet Stagium and the Ballet of the City of São Paulo / Brazil, where she was Artistic Director for two years. She is Professor at the Department of Dance and the Performing Arts Graduate Program at State University of Campinas UNICAMP. Julia studied at New York University, earning a Bachelor of Arts and Master of The Fine Arts from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and a PhD in Education from Unicamp. She has been Director of the Dançaberta Research Group in Dance and Somatic Education/Unicamp since 2000.



Organisers:
University of Roehampton: Dr Heike Salzer, Dance ([email protected]), Senior Lecturer and Secretary of Board of Directors, Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema; Dr Stacey Prickett, Senior Honorary Research Fellow; Ye Rin Lee, PhD Student and Marketing and Digital Promotion Intern of Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema.

International collaborators:
Ana Baer MFA (Professor of Dance, Texas State University, US; Artistic Co-Director, Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema), Michelle Bernier MFA (Artistic Co-Director Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema),Rosely Conz MFA (Assistant Professor of Dance at Alma College in Michigan, US; Producer & Curator, Sans Souci Brazill), Dr Julia Ziviani PhD (Professor at the Department of Dance and the Performing Arts Graduate Program at State University of Campinas UNICAMP; general director of SSF Brazil)

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Estimated audience numbers (if applicable)

40

Period	11 May 2022
Event type	Other
Location	London, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National