Speakers: Antonia Baehr, Clare Croft and Amelia Jones

In the first decades of the 21st century, many traditional stereotypes surrounding gender and sexuality have continued to be scrutinized. The LGBTQA movement, queer theory and #metoo, for instance, have encouraged a growing awareness of those identities and experiences that are marginalized by dominant ways of categorization. Likewise, various genders and sexualities have been gaining visibility in popular culture, as well as in the political arena. The challenge persists, however, to negotiate between the development of categories and structures, and the relational conditions through which notions of difference are continuously reconfigured.

Dance has been particularly responsive to such issues of difference. Fostering an art that thinks through bodies, movement and relation, dance and choreography support an exploration and rethinking of questions of corporeality, sexuality and gender. They carry the potential to frame difference not as a divergence from what is already established in advance, but rather to queer difference as a creative openness that continuously produces new ways of relating.

On April 26th, 2019, the Centre for Cultural Studies (KU Leuven) and STUK – House for Dance, Image & Sound are hosting their fourth annual symposium on choreographic issues, Transforming Relations: Dance and Difference. The event brings together speakers from dance studies and related theoretical fields, as well as practitioners, to reflect on how relations are transformed and how relations transform within the field of dance.   – more info

SCHEDULE
14.00 – 14.15 Welcome and introduction 
14.15 – 15.00 Amelia Jones 
15.00 – 15.45 Antonia Baehr
15.45 – 16.30 Clare Croft
16.30 – 17.00 Coffee break
17.00 – 18.00 Round table