| Abstract |
What does social choreography mean today, and to what extent can this field provide new frameworks to help address the issue of cultural stereotyping of refugees? Violent military conflict, environmental crises, breakdown of social, racial or ethnic integration, are some of the many reasons why millions of peoples are being displaced across the world. Immigration is regarded today as arguably one of the most pressing political issues by voters and the wider public, and not only in a post-Brexit UK. Whilst the problem of forced migration is typically addressed from within the social sciences (e.g. migration and diaspora studies, sociology, political science, or development studies), little is known about the way in which the movement arts and bodily perspectives are responding to such crises. The gap in knowledge that the network is aiming to address concerns a lack of understanding of embodied socio-choreographic practice at a regional and cross-national level. There is no existing platform that has developed a framework devoted to movement as the chosen medium, nor a project that has mapped movement-based practices, models or methods dealing with refugee crises. There is a gap in the ethical understanding, which is why we need to ask ourselves what constitutes "good practice" across different regional and national contexts in social choreography, especially in relation to pressing issues such as forced migration. This network also seeks to build upon a current interest in expanded choreography. In recent years the term "choreography" has been used in an ever-widening sense, becoming synonymous with specific structures and strategies disconnected from aesthetic bodily expression, style and technique. The function of choreography as an expanded trope has shifted from a set of protocols or tools used primarily in dance (or applied dance), to an open cluster of knowledge production concerned with the organization of bodily movement in social, political and even economic contexts. Our network is clear about its focus on non-stage practices. We have decided not to focus on the treatment of migration within aesthetic choreography (e.g. Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, etc.) but to foreground work that is being carried out more directly with local communities and through motor activity that is not typified by technique or style. Named participants have been chosen on the basis of their specialist knowledge across different areas and the capacity to deliver workshops, forums, public engagement, mediation, relief work and therapy. What kind of ethos and theoretical discourse is emerging from such practices, and what kind of synergies can be leveraged across projects in different geopolitical contexts? An area of intense study in dance history (Hewitt 2005, McNeill 2007, Jackson 2008), social choreography offers a theoretical link between everyday movement and the choreographic arts that can inform a number of other disciplines. According to Hewitt, social choreography redefines ideology's mode of operation, linking "aesthetic" and "performative" perspectives with more abstract socio-political understandings of social movement and action. Histories of the discipline and biopower are currently problematized by movements of people and goods in disorganised and undisciplined flows. The historical approach to social choreography needs to be revisited in order to take into account present-day issues such as the impact of digital technology, the closing of national borders, the restriction of free mobility, and crucially, the stereotyping of "refugees" or "asylum seekers", both negative cultural tags that seem to efface the individual person behind the label. By bringing together experienced practitioners working on the ground, and by linking communities affected by forced displacement, we will help lead social choreography to a second phase of development as an interdisciplinary and international field of study. |
