Dance In London Research Articles

Assembling with VR

In this paper, we consider the claims that constellate around the concepts of immersion, presence and empathy that have been made about virtual reality across many disciplines of study, including psychology, criminology, immersive film and media. These claims are applied to an interdisciplinary, collaborative project: VR Dance; which engaged young people (11-16 years) in hip hop and immersive technology workshops over a six-week period. We discuss the ways in which co-created immersive environments which centre the body offer potential to tune into and re-calibrate our sensitivities and modes of engagement with each other and the environments we are in. We argue that this is not simply as a result of technology’s effects on individuals but constituted in wider assemblages of human and nonhuman actors. We make the case for virtual reality, not as a tool for ‘becoming other’, but as part of wider assemblages in ongoing transformations, relocations, and calibrations. Funding Acknowledgement VR Dance is an East London Dance programme, funded by the Mayor of London’s Young Londoner’s Fund & the London Borough of Redbridge and delivered in partnership with the University of Bristol, BirdGang Ltd, Maskomi and PlayLa.bZ.

‘Critical Pathways’ – Training and Investigating the Art of Choreography-Making with Rosemary Butcher

This article discusses the pedagogic practice of British choreographer Rosemary Butcher (1947–2016) with a particular focus on the ways she mentored dancers and choreographers as part of her self-curated workshop series Critical Pathways, programmed over a number of years at Independent Dance in London. Drawing on archive materials, personal research notes as well as practitioner interviews, the article draws out some of the idiosyncratic pathways of dance training that practitioners encountered as part of the series, and the ways these continue to influence their ongoing practice. The writing thematises Butcher’s signature use of language and conceptual tools for choreography-making, as well as her approach to teaching and mentoring dance practitioners, which was inextricably tied to her choreographic practice. Never seeming to settle on a formula that had worked before, there was an arguably timeless and endlessly adaptable inexhaustibility and curiosity to her approach to making that are key qualities of inventive practice. The article further discusses the ways that Butcher instigated processes of critical self-reflection and approaches to reinvention as part of a continual investigation into what dance and choreography might be.

Nationalism, satire, and Romantic ballet: Thackeray, Taglioni, and the good old (English) plan

In April 1833, William Makepeace Thackeray, then in his early twenties, saw the ballerina Marie Taglioni dance in London. The ballet was Charles Didelot’s Flore et Zephire, revived for four perform...

Location of Possibilities

ABSTRACTLearning through dance technique has the potential to transform students, both in terms of their bodily capabilities and their sense of self in the world. By exploring the “how” of dance pedagogy, this research study investigates dance technique learning through the accounts of undergraduate students and teacher-researcher reflexivity at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. The multilayered experiences of seven student participants are centralized, bringing insight to the complex ways that transformation might be enabled in dance technique pedagogy. The theoretical perspectives of engaged pedagogy (hooks 1994) and care ethics (Noddings 2013) provide a framework through which participant student data are organized. Active participation, demonstration of care, and stimulating environments are discussed in terms of the nuance of experience for individual students. An interpretive phenomenological approach is used in this longitudinal study within which the teacher-researcher locates himself or herself as subject and coparticipant.

The (Spectral) Lure of the Past

Sadler's Wells, undeniably one of the world's most commercially successful dance venues, also advertises itself as one of the oldest. Sadler's Wells is “London's Dance House Est. 1683.” The institution boasts historical ascendency and, I argue, ontological authority (“Sadler's Wells is Dance”). Yet by its own admission, previous theatres standing roughly on the same site boasted a range of circus acts, grand opera, music, Shakespeare performance and film in the more than three hundred years of history preceding the current dance explosion. In slightly exaggerating its own dance history, gesturing expansively towards this motley performance history as signalling a past of dance, Sadler's Wells conjures what I call its own spectral historicity, by which a dancing past haunts the present, inhabits this site. Sadler's Wells, unlike Shakespeare's Globe, for instance, foregoes any claims to historical reconstruction or reperformance, fetishizing instead the archaeological layers (literally, the wells) lying beneath it. Significantly dropping the ‘Theatre’ from ‘Sadler's Wells Theatre’ to become again (merely) Sadler's Wells, the millennial institution becomes itself through continual allusion to a semi-fictional (dance) history. In this sense conjuring the sort of spectrality Jacques Derrida, and Rebecca Schneider after him, claim characterizes late capitalism, Sadler's Wells performs its own perpetual arrival at the end of history: a history that has absorbed and forestalled all other systems and genres. Instantiating thus the ultimate late capitalist art institution, Sadler's Wells rebrands itself as being perpetually, inalienably, haunted by dance as such – genre to which it is, ex post facto, host and heir.

Book review: Walking and dancing: three years of dance in London 1951–1953, by Larraine Nicholas

Book review: Walking and dancing: three years of dance in London 1951–1953, by Larraine Nicholas

Beauties and Beasts: London Dance Spectacles, Great and Small

Beauties and Beasts: London Dance Spectacles, Great and Small

A Trip for the Works of Epidermis Artists

Herzog and de Meuron were 2001 Pulitzer prize winners. Their buildings are famous because of the unique and amazing epidermis. In their representative works, there are two major ways to create and form epidermis. The first one is learning from the surrounding context and environment, and the second is thinking about the features of architectures. This paper, through the investigation of six of their major works: Dominus Winery in California of the US(1998), De Young Museum in San Francisco (2004), the library of Brandenburg Industrial University in Germany, the Tokyo Prada flagship store in Japan, Munich Allianz Stadium in Germany, and Laban Centre for Contemporary Dance in London, summarizes the main methods of H&dM.Architecture surface processing is becoming more and more concerned by the construction industry and the viewers. H&dMs methods of design provide our use for reference. Let us look forward to their next new work.

‘Our favourite drug’: prevalence of use and preference for mephedrone in the London night-time economy 1 year after control

Aim: To conduct a follow-up study to assess the prevalence of use and popularity of emergent psychoactive drugs (“legal highs”), amongst London club-goers 12 months after previous surveys in the same location.Design: Four in situ surveys were conducted in July 2011 at the same two fieldwork sites as the previous surveys to assess the prevalence of self-reported use of both illegal drugs and “legal highs”.Setting: Field study in the night-time economy in South London, UK.Participants: 315 customers in two “gay-friendly” South London dance clubs.Measurements: Two-page research instrument designed for in situ drug surveys.Findings: Mephedrone remained the most popular drug used (increase from 2010 to 2011 from 27 to 41%% of those surveyed who had used or planned to use mephedrone on the fieldwork night). Mephedrone was also respondents’ favourite drug.Conclusions: This survey suggests that the popularity of mephedrone surpasses other drugs, both legal and illegal, despite it having been classified illegal by the UK government over a year prior to this survey. Club-goers appeared undeterred by the legal classification of this emergent psychoactive substance. This study has implications for other countries and other drugs regarding the relationship between drug use and drug control.

Gained in Translation: Recreation as Creative Practice

Valerie Preston-Dunlop and Lesley-Anne Sayers, from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London, recently recreated very different dance works from the 1920s. In this article they discuss the value of recreation as creative practice and the discoveries they have made regarding “lost” works, for example, Rudolf Laban's Die Grünen Clowns (Green Clowns) and Nacht (Night) and Sergei Prokofiev, Georgi Yakoulov, and Léonide Massine's collaboration for Le Pas d’Acier (The Steel Step). Considering the potential of educational centers specializing in recreation as research laboratories for the profession, they reflect upon, from two different perspectives, the need to document and disseminate knowledge about creative processes as opposed to simply recording performance.

Black dance in London, 1730-1850: innovation, tradition and resistance

Black dance in London, 1730-1850: innovation, tradition and resistance

Dear Jane … Affectionately Doris H.: The Friendship of Doris Humphrey and Jane Winearls

This article explores the unpublicized and little-known friendship of Doris Humphrey and Jane Winearls, arguing that what each of them sought in the other was the chance to share inner reflections and dreams with a stimulating, supportive fellow dance practitioner. I examine how their friendship began when Winearls was one of the London dance critics who reviewed the José Limón Dance Company during the company's 1957 European tour, and how it developed through a pleasurable long-distance correspondence. In addition, I compare and contrast the two artists' writings on dance, their views as dance educators, their attitudes toward dance notation as a means to preserve their work, and their preparation of materials for posterity.

A new method to monitor drugs at dance venues

Information on the use of illicit drugs depends heavily on users' recall—what they remember, or think, that they have purchased—and on seizures by law enforcement agencies. Neither method may be...

Acceptance of the Harm Minimization Message in London Clubs and Underground System

Harm minimization strategies recognize that risk behaviours may be difficult to eliminate completely, and therefore, aim to minimize the potential hazards associated with drug use rather than regulating use itself. The merits of harm reduction strategies as public health measures have been extensively debated. Although the approach has gained credibility in specific areas (e.g. needle exchange schemes) it is still somewhat controversial when applied to other areas of drugs prevention work. This paper explores public acceptability of the harm minimization approach using evidence from the evaluation of the London Dance Safety campaign. This initiative acknowledged the appeal of drug use from the young person's perspective as well as its potential medical, social and legal consequences. Pocket-sized booklets were distributed in clubs and posters were displayed on the London underground and bus system. The anticipated public opposition to the intervention failed to materialize, despite high awareness in the target and non-target groups. Demand for the campaign materials from the non-target group of parents, and others, was unexpectedly high. Well-managed drugs interventions promoting harm reduction have the potential to offer proven benefits, with minimal costs in terms of public resistance.

Dance drug education in clubs: evaluation of the London Dance Safety Campaign

Drugs have long been associated with music and youth culture. This paper reports on the evaluation of the London Dance Safety Campaign 1997, an intervention designed to reduce the harmful effects of drug use in dance venues. Surveys of London clubbers were carried out prior to the campaign, and following its inception. Posters on London Underground were shown to be .a successful medium for raising awareness of the campaign in this target audi ence. The campaign was positively perceived as realistic, non-moralistic and factual. The take-home message was a little unclear, possibly a result of the contradictory and confusing drugs information received from other sources. Evidence of high recreational drug usage among London dance-club attenders justifies targeting this subgroup of the population in future similar drug cam paigns.

Baroque opera & dance in London

Journal Article Baroque opera & dance in London Get access Moira Goff Moira Goff Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Early Music, Volume XXVI, Issue 2, May 1998, Pages 369–372, https://doi.org/10.1093/earlyj/XXVI.2.369 Published: 01 May 1998

Your Honor'd and Obedient Servant: Patronage and Dance in London c. 1700-1735

So wrote the poet Matthew Prior of his patron, the Earl of Dorset, in 1694. The noble picture he sketches however, of a latterday Maecenas who gave support and protection to men of letters and culture within his household, who commissioned new works and gained high honours for his proteges, was a rather rare occurrence in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century England. We today cannot view patronage of the arts in late Stuart and early Hanoverian England in the same way as, say, scholars of French history can regard the court of Louis XIV with its careful