Tanz und Migration

Engagement with and dialogue about dance, migration and aesthetic diversity with various publics is central to this research communication project. Dance inhabits an ambiguous position in discourses around migration and the cultural sector (particularly in German- speaking areas): on the one hand, dance serves as a prime example for internationality in the performing arts; on the other hand, however, it also harbors an extraordinary potential for the performance of otherness through foreign/other dance and movement languages. With its focus on artistic, cultural, and aesthetic diversity, and multilingual movement texts, this communication project is based on the current stand-alone research project Traversing the Contemporary (pl.): Choreographic Articulations between European and Indian Dance (P 24190; duration 1.3.2012-30.9.2015), which critically interrogates the aesthetic category of the contemporary by way of dance, postcolonial and cultural studies based analyses of the hybrid choreographic practices of artists living and working in Europe. Paying close attention to the cultural groundrealities of 21st century Europe, concepts of own/familiar and foreign/other that dominate discourses of migration and the arts are being critically examined in the course of these choreographic analyses. The communication project consists of four parts: 1) choreographic residencies with students of dance and choreography 2) a site-specific, participatory performance-lecture which addresses questions of the foreign/other within the own/familiar, as well as dance and movement as embodied cultural knowlegdes and artistic raw materials for a general audience (not necessarily academics or artists) 3) a community-performance dealing with the topic diversity in motion which will be created in collaboration with a group of non-dancers who have migrated to Austria 4) an interdisciplinary performance-symposium for researchers from disciplines beyond dance studies and members of the cultural/arts sector, for example choreographers, curators, critics. The communication activities aim to address distinct publics in each part of the project, and strive to increase awareness of an existing diversity and communicate approaches for an open and enriching engagement with this diversity. Wissenschaftskommunikationsprojekt; Prof. Dr. Claudia Jeschke

The project Dance and Migration initiated activities designed to instigate and facilitate exchange about contemporary dance and its engagement with migration. While the topic of migration referring not just to mobility, but (cultural) difference is negotiated in multifaceted ways in many societal contexts and academic disciplines (not exclusively, but particularly in the context of current social and political events) it remains a desideratum in European contemporary dance and dance studies research. While contemporary dance often represents itself as international per se (because not dependent on language), on a dancerly, choreographic, and aesthetic level there is little reflection of culturally marked aesthetic multiplicity. This science-communication-project aimed to address precisely this often invisible separation and thereby bring it into artistic and scholarly discourse through a wide range of communication formats, addressing a range of target-groups. Through initiatives such as residences and workshops with students of dance and (young) people who have recently migrated to Austria, lectures in interdisciplinary academic contexts and a performance-symposium, which brought together academics, dancers/choreographers (in training), curators and critics, and non-professionals who engage in dance to discuss the theme of migration on a broad theoretical level as well as to reflect and negotiate it artistically. In cooperation with the Institute of Dance Arts (IDA) of Anton-Bruckner- Privatuniversität, (Linz; Prof. Rose Breuss), the Salzburg Experimental Dance Academy (SEAD), Sayed Labib and Veronika Kulcsars initiative Bewegte Interaktion (Vienna), Impulstanz (Vienna), the Interfakultären Forschungsplattform Geschlechterforschung (Universität Innsbruck) and Verein Viele (Salzburg) a number of workshops, presentations and lecture-performances came into existence. Particularly noteworthy as outputs at the intersection of communication, theory and practice are the (lecture-) performances of participants which were developed in the residencies and reflection-workshops, presented at the projects performance-symposium in Linz and the Jahrestagung der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Musikwissenschaft in Salzburg. The various activities showed that the topic of migration has arrived in dance (as it has in public discourse at large) in terms of a recognition of, engagement with and interest in its socio-political relevance. However the same level of engagement with culturally marked aesthetic difference cannot be found in dancerly and choreographic practice. The various communication-activities of the project revealed this gap and created an awareness of the discrepancy between theory and practice. The project Dance and Migration thereby opened up a new, socio-politically relevant and current field for (contemporary) dance and theoretical and artistic dance research, which was consistently welcomed by the heterogeneous groups of participants with great interest.