• Archived Events/ Spring 2012

    Jeff Packman

    The ShowRoom Chichester

    Staging Sound in Bahia, Brazil: Negotiating Musical Knowledge, Technology, and Power in Professional Music Performances

    Music

    Wed 18th April 12-1pm
    Venue: Bishop Otter Campus: Room LO3
    Free admission

    This presentation examines the knowledges necessary to make popular music by examining the many nuanced interactions that take place immediately before performances by professional musicians. Building on work by Tom Porcello (1998) and Paul Théberge (1997) that emphasizes the centrality of technological understanding and the ability to communicate such knowledge, I focus on the micropolitics of interactions between musicians, sound technicians, and producers in the context of live performances and recording studios. At stake for these negotiations is often the success of the presentation, which can, in turn, have implications for career trajectories and professional survival.

  • Archived Events/ Spring 2012

    Danielle Robinson

    The ShowRoom Chichester

    Reconstructing Ragtime Dancing: Moving from the Archive to the Repertoire

    Dance

    Wed 28th March 12-1pm
    Venue: Bishop Otter Campus: Room LO3
    Free admission

    Despite being one of the first modern dance forms, we know relatively little about ragtime dancing. The little we do know addresses only the codified and commodified dance practices of professional performers and their elite audiences. My project is to reconstruct the ragtime dancing of a wide range of cultures and classes–to ask ourselves how immigrants and migrants danced ragtime, for example. The goal is to maintain the diversity of ragtime dancing and recognize the opportunities for creative choice built within the practice, rather than homogenize my primary sources into a single universal historical dance object called ragtime dance. By embracing the difference within dance forms, I argue dance researchers can better access the multiple meanings, pleasures, and intrinsic power of the dancing we study.

  • Archived Events/ Spring 2012

    Susan Jones

    The ShowRoom Chichester

    T.S. Eliot and Dance

    Literature and Dance

    Wed 7th March 12-1pm
    Venue: Bishop Otter Campus: Room LO3
    Free admission

    Dr Susan Jones will discuss the impact of early twentieth-century European dance on Eliot’s poetics and subsequently that of Eliot’s poetry on modern dance forms in the United States. Dr Jones is an ex-soloist with The Scottish Ballet and now Lecturer in English at St. Hilda’s College Oxford.

  • Archived Events/ Spring 2012

    Anna Davies

    The ShowRoom Chichester

    Dance in the novels of Balzac, Flaubert and Maupassant

    French Literature and Dance

    Wed 22nd Feb 12-1pm
    Venue: Bishop Otter Campus: Room LO3
    Free admission

    Anna Davies will speak on the literary representations of social dance in the novels of Balzac (1799-1850), Flaubert (1821-80) and Maupassant (1850-93). Setting these readings in the context of the historical court records pertaining to ‘illicit’ dancing in the Paris dance-halls and guinguettes, she will explore how far these literary portrayals add to our understanding of the social and political significance of popular dance in Paris as the 19th century unfolded.

  • Archived Events/ Spring 2012

    Karen McNally

    The ShowRoom Chichester

    Album Cover Moments: Frank Sinatra, Gender and the Complexities of Star Imaging

    Performing Arts, Music and Film/Media

    Wed 25th Jan 12-1pm
    Venue: Bishop Otter Campus: Room LO3
    Free admission

    Frank Sinatra’s post-war star image represents an exemplary case of intertextuality, crossing the multiple boundaries of film, television and nightclub performances, musical recordings, and an extensive variety of media commentary. The image of masculinity articulated via this intertextuality both illuminates post-war debates around masculinity and challenges further ideas of gender, sexual and American identity. This paper considers some of this imagery, exploring in particular the 1954 Warner Bros. film Young at Heart and its explicit referencing of Sinatra’s persona as a singer in both musical and visual terms.