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"Mobilizing Movement: Neoliberalism and the Collectivization of the Dancing Body in Post-Crisis Buenos Aires”

January 27, 2014
5:30PM - 7:00PM
George Wells Knight House, 104 E. 15th Ave.

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Add to Calendar 2014-01-27 17:30:00 2014-01-27 19:00:00 "Mobilizing Movement: Neoliberalism and the Collectivization of the Dancing Body in Post-Crisis Buenos Aires” Event Host: Humanities Institute Widespread political mobilization defined by collective and embodied action responded to the insecurity and bodily precarity created by Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis. The result of neoliberal policies instituted during the repressive last military dictatorship (1976-1983) and intensified throughout the 1990s, the crisis severely exacerbated growing landscapes of inequality. This talk examines how the crisis gave rise to an unprecedented interest in the political possibilities of movement within the Buenos Aires contemporary dance community. It focuses on Lucía Russo’s 2009 The Silent Border of Things and the embodied dialogue the work established between middle class dance practitioners and female residents of the impoverished Villa 31/Barrio Güemes Retiro shantytown. The experimental stage work combined collaborative creation, structured improvisation, and a trash-strewn stage scape to reflect on the ad-hoc survival strategies of post-crisis urban life. Invited Villa 31 residents attended the premiere and met the dancers; this encounter produced a community dance project based in Villa 31. Led by cast members, the weekly sessions translated the work’s improvisation exercises from the theater to the shantytown to address the corporeal politics of scarce resources, domestic violence, racial discrimination, and reproductive health. Analyzing the stage work, considering the community dance project, and drawing on interviews with project members, I demonstrate how the The Silent Border of Things negotiated the debilitating effects of neoliberal crisis through choreographies of collectivity. This project joined a breadth of post-2001 dance initiatives that reconfigured normative relationships between bodies, urban space, capital, and artistic practice and representation. Victoria Fortuna is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance at Oberlin College. Victoria received her PhD and MA in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and a BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University. Victoria’s interests include the history and criticism of Latin/o American concert and social dance, dance as a mode of political and community organization, and cultural histories of dance in transnational perspective. She is currently preparing a book manuscript on the relationship between Buenos Aires, Argentina based contemporary dance practices and histories of political and economic violence from the 1960s to the present. For more information, visit huminst.osu.edu. Sponsored by Performance/Politics Working Group. George Wells Knight House, 104 E. 15th Ave. College of Arts and Sciences asccomm@osu.edu America/New_York public
Event Host: Humanities Institute


Widespread political mobilization defined by collective and embodied action responded to the insecurity and bodily precarity created by Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis. The result of neoliberal policies instituted during the repressive last military dictatorship (1976-1983) and intensified throughout the 1990s, the crisis severely exacerbated growing landscapes of inequality. This talk examines how the crisis gave rise to an unprecedented interest in the political possibilities of movement within the Buenos Aires contemporary dance community. It focuses on Lucía Russo’s 2009 The Silent Border of Things and the embodied dialogue the work established between middle class dance practitioners and female residents of the impoverished Villa 31/Barrio Güemes Retiro shantytown. The experimental stage work combined collaborative creation, structured improvisation, and a trash-strewn stage scape to reflect on the ad-hoc survival strategies of post-crisis urban life. Invited Villa 31 residents attended the premiere and met the dancers; this encounter produced a community dance project based in Villa 31. Led by cast members, the weekly sessions translated the work’s improvisation exercises from the theater to the shantytown to address the corporeal politics of scarce resources, domestic violence, racial discrimination, and reproductive health. Analyzing the stage work, considering the community dance project, and drawing on interviews with project members, I demonstrate how the The Silent Border of Things negotiated the debilitating effects of neoliberal crisis through choreographies of collectivity. This project joined a breadth of post-2001 dance initiatives that reconfigured normative relationships between bodies, urban space, capital, and artistic practice and representation.

Victoria Fortuna is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance at Oberlin College. Victoria received her PhD and MA in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and a BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University. Victoria’s interests include the history and criticism of Latin/o American concert and social dance, dance as a mode of political and community organization, and cultural histories of dance in transnational perspective. She is currently preparing a book manuscript on the relationship between Buenos Aires, Argentina based contemporary dance practices and histories of political and economic violence from the 1960s to the present.

For more information, visit huminst.osu.edu.

Sponsored by Performance/Politics Working Group.

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