Conference
Urban Party Mix: Performing the Americas in the Metropole
Center for Folklore Studies Spring Colloquium
February 21-23, 2008The Bowen Theatre, Drake Center
The Ohio State University
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The simultaneous deterritorialization and re-rooting of Latin American and Caribbean forms of celebration within urban centers of Europe and the United States has accentuated their essential hybridity and intensified social and aesthetic transformations in the performing communities. In honor of the Columbus opening of the exhibit "Midnight Robbers: The Artists of Notting Hill Carnival," this colloquium will place the London carnival in conversation with emerging Latin and LusoAmerican dance scenes in Newark, New Jersey. In both locales the individual and collective identities of performing revelers are changing. As new and diverse groups acquire styles of bodily expression associated with the marginalized Americas, what are the aesthetic, economic, social, and political effects? Come discuss the promise and challenges of hybrid forms among shifting populations.
The colloquium is organized by the Center for Folklore Studies and the Department of Theatre with support from the Office of International Affairs, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Latin American Studies, the Departments of Dance and Spanish and Portuguese, the Program in Ethnomusicology, and the Lusophone Globalicities Working Group.
RSVP requested for the Thursday reception and Friday and Saturday lunch to Sheila Bock bock.42@osu.edu.
The exhibition "Midnight Robbers: The Artists of Notting Hill Carnival," co-curated by Center Associate Lesley Ferris of the Department of Theatre, will be held February 5th-April 4th at the OSU Urban Arts Space (see http://theatre.osu.edu/carnival/index.html).
Schedule
Thursday, February 21Reception and tour of the exhibition "Midnight Robbers," 6:30-8:30, OSU Urban Arts Space, 50 West Town Street. Music from OSU’s own steel band.
Friday, February 22
Morning
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9:30 Introduction
Dorothy Noyes, Director, The Center for Folklore Studies, OSU
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9:45 Carnival Diasporas: The View from Notting Hill
"ImagiNation: Our Nation"
Ali Pretty, Artistic Director, Kinetika Arts International, UK
"Sonic Diaspora and Identities: Sound Systems and Bass Culture at Notting Hill Carnival"
Julian Henriques, Filmmaker and Lecturer, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Lesley Ferris, Professor, Department of Theatre, discussant
- 12:00 Lunch in Morrill Dining Room
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1:15 Hybrid Performance Spaces in Northern New Jersey
"Tropical Interference: Portuguese/Brazilian Conflict on Parade"
Kimberly DaCosta Holton, Associate Professor of Portuguese and Lusophone World Studies, Rutgers University-Newark
"Embracing Difference: Salsa Fever in New Jersey"
Katherine Borland, Associate Professor of Comparative Studies, OSU-Newark
Richard Gordon, Assistant Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, discussant
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4:00 Keynote address 4:00-5:30
Welcome from Dean John Roberts, College of Humanities
"'O Herói': Ambivalent Heroism in Urban Brazilian Party Culture"
Barbara Browning, Associate Professor of Performance Studies, New York University
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5:30 Salsa workshop
Salsa dance instruction from Shezronne Zaccardi
Morning
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10:00 OSU student presentations
"Transnational Actors in the Brooklyn Carnival"
Ken Archer, Doctoral Candidate, Ethnomusicology
"Translating Danza de las Tijeras: The Contemporary Transnational Scene"
Jason Bush, Doctoral Candidate, Theatre and Folklore
"Learning to be Natural: Re-valuing Women’s Bodies through Middle Eastern Dance"
Sheila Bock, Doctoral Candidate, English and Folklore
"Over, Under, Around, and Through the Embargo: The Cultural Trading of the United States and Cuba"
Jenai Cutcher, MFA Student, Dance
Barbara Browning and Julian Henriques, discussants.
- 12:00 Lunch in Morrill Dining Room
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1:15 The Diaspora Returns: Two Short Films 1:15-4:00
Din Shuru: A Carnival in India
presented by Ruth Tompsett, Principal Lecturer in Drama and Theatre, Middlesex University
Soy andina presented by Ulises Juan Zevallos-Aguilar, Assistant Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
