A virtual conference hosted by the University of Pennsylvania and the Dance Studies Association’s Early Dance Working Group
What does it look like for historical expressions of dancing and movement arts to break out of traditional academic and performative boxes? How do scholars and practitioners escape the boundaries of discipline, chronology, geography, and methodology subsumed under the conventional appellation of “early dance”? Conversely, how can we demonstrate the ways in which our work complements and completes the work of other disciplines in light of these distinctions? This symposium explores early dance as an idea, a time, a place, a locus of cultural meaning and aims to draw together scholars working across disciplines and geographies who are nevertheless invested in “early” dance and movement.
We invite papers for this virtual symposium from scholars across disciplines, exploring aspects of dance and movement from all methodological perspectives, finding commonality in the antecedental nature of their work. Whether looking at the musical, literary, cultural, political, religious, or social contexts of dance, or expanding knowledge of its somatic and kinesthetic dimensions, we find unity in the chronological earliness of our work. We encourage papers that explore dance outside of Western European frameworks of knowledge and movement production, including comparative or transhistorical perspectives on pre-1800 or “early” dance.
Submission due date: Sept. 15, 2023
Notification of acceptance by Nov. 1, 2023
Submit proposals via submission portal:
