Moving Bodies and Social Justice

Oberlin College and the Five Colleges of Ohio present “Moving Bodies and Social Justice,” a series of virtual presentations and workshops developed to explore new curricula and pedagogical approaches that will engage all bodies who want to move within dance communities.

With a focus on Kinethics, Body Positivity: Radical Self Love and Social Transformation, and Queer Kinethics, the aim of the program is to redesign curriculum that is intentionally anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-ablist across disciplines and departments within the Five Colleges of Ohio.

“This grant has given us the opportunity to shift our annual in-person dance festival into a format that allows us to engage with important artists/scholars from across the country,” says Ann Cooper Albright, professor and chair of dance. “ Like Oberlin, the other Ohio-five dance programs are committed to a vision of dance as a form of cultural literacy—one that is not simply about training for different movement techniques, but also about tracing their embodied ideas.”

In addition to the featured presentations, there will be faculty discussions about pedagogy and curriculum with each of the guest artists/scholars, as well as student-curated movement and making workshops.

“Moving Bodies and Social Justice” is sponsored by the Ohio Five Collaborative Grants Program in conjunction with the dance departments of Oberlin College, The College of Wooster, Kenyon College, Denison University, and Ohio Wesleyan University, with assistance from Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and Title IX programs at Oberlin.

Upcoming Events:

•  7 p.m. February 18 — Naomi Macalalad Bragin will present Black Power of Hip Hop Dance: On Kinethic Politics.

• 7 p.m. February 25 — mayfield brooks will present A discourse for de-composing dance and choreographing breath.

•  7 p.m.March 18 — A roundtable discussion on Body Positivity: Radical Self-Love and Social Transformation with Sydnie L. Mosley and Sharon Udoh.

•  7 p.m. April 15 — Thomas F. DeFrantz will present Making*Queering*Dancing.

• 7 p.m. April 22 — Jaamil Olawale Kosoko will present The Transgressive Body Workshop.

All events are free and open to the public.

For more information, including Zoom links for events see: Moving Bodies and Social Justice.