The Institute of Cultural Studies (KU Leuven) is proud to be part of the new Research Network for Dance Studies CoDa | Cultures of Dance

CoDa | Cultures of Dance​ is a newly created research network funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). By bringing together several research centers with leading expertise in dance scholarship and choreographic practices, CoDa provides a platform for the expansion and anchoring of dance studies in Flanders and Europe.

The aim of CoDa is to build a collective platform that contributes to the development of dance studies as an academic and practice-oriented discipline on both a local and international level. CoDa stands for “Cultures of Dance” in order to acknowledge the variety of choreographic practices, scholarly approaches, and cultural backgrounds that steer the broad scope of the growing field of dance studies. In its current form, CoDa joins the forces of several Belgian partners with a range of international research units from across Europe that are recognized for their excellence in dance scholarship. By facilitating collaboration on various levels, CoDa will foster the mutual exchange of knowledge, competences, and skills between dance researchers and practitioners coming from different backgrounds but with a shared interest into how diverse cultures of dance operate in terms of aesthetics, politics, (inter)disciplinarity, and embodied epistemologies.

The creation of CoDa finds its impetus in the general observation that, apart from some exceptions, research on dance is still highly fragmented. Dance scholarship often takes place at university departments that do not focus specifically on dance, but rather identify themselves with other branches within the humanities, such as (art) history, cultural studies, theater and film studies, philosophy, sociology, or media studies. Even though the interest in building interdisciplinary connections between different research domains is characteristic of dance scholarship, the actual potential of this interdisciplinarity can only be fully realized through a common network that enables dance scholars to bring their different methodological approaches into dialogue with each other.

CoDa consists of a Belgian Core Division and a European Partner Division. With this initiative, the growing community of Belgian dance scholars sets out to connect with a larger network of international partners and peers in Europe. The Belgian team will function as a bridge between all partners who have few opportunities to meet and exchange together, particularly in the European landscape.

The following research units are involved:

Belgian Core Division:

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics (University of Antwerp)
• S:PAM (Studies in Performing Arts & Media, Ghent University)
• Institute for Cultural Studies (KU Leuven)
• CiASP (Centre de Recherche en Cinéma et Arts du Spectacle, ULB)
• CORPoREAL (Royal Conservatoire Antwerp).

European Partner Division:

• Centre for Dance Research (University of Roehampton, UK)
• C-DaRE (Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University, UK)
• Dancing Memory – Transmitting Heritage (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, IT)
• Local Dance Scenes on Global Stages (University of Arts, Belgrade, UA).
• Transmission in Motion (Utrecht University, NL)

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