Dance, displacement, diaspora 1

The module "Dance, displacement, diaspora" is envisaged as the contextual frame to interrogate issues of migration and heritage. This was an extremely successful, innovative part of Choreomundus 2020-2025 compared to Choreomundus 2012-2018 and 2017-2021. It is further developed for the Choreomundus cycle 2024-2030.

Our rationale for the course is the following: displaced people cannot take tangible heritage with themselves, they are forced to leave their homes, land etc. behind them. Yet wherever people move, either in refugee camps or in diaspora organisations, they find a way to re-invigorate their intangible heritage, as do those displaced and then returned to homeland. Memories, traditions, songs and dances do, however, travel, maintaining links to home and country of origin. In this new course we will focus on a range of case studies to address dancing communities in camps for displaced people, in diaspora or reconstituted localities. Moreover, the course problematises the ways in which contemporary performances of earlier dance forms are enacted and examines their contemporary transmission within global diasporas, thus questioning how heritage is continuously recreated.

Students who successfully complete this module will have acquired:

Knowledge

• An understanding of the fluidity of the concepts of dance heritage and community, diaspora and displacement
• Theory on learning and transmission of dance in the context of global migration

Skills

• Tools for the study of global transmission processes in dance education
• Methodological tools for netnographic research
• Principles in collecting of movement material from recordings and online ethnography

Lectures, seminars and supervised practical and methodological exercises in small groups.

Instruction is obligatory and demands minimum 80% attendance.