Choreography and Corporeality

The Choreography and Corporeality working group is a site for exploring the overlap of choreography, broadly understood as designing movement of bodies, and the experiential state of having a body or bodies in movement, whether human, non-human, or more-than-human.

KEYWORDS

• bodies
• dance
• movement
• the choreographic

Contact 

choreographyandcorporeality@gmail.com

Convenors

Hanna Järvinen, Melissa Blanco, Yatin Lin

About the WG

The Choreography and Corporeality working group is a site for exploring the overlap of choreography, broadly understood as designing movement of bodies, and the experiential state of having a body or bodies in movement, whether human, non-human, or more-than-human. Members of the working group focus on many kinds of bodies in movement through different socio-political, historical, cultural, philosophical, and practical frameworks.

The emphasis of the working group is on works in progress. Participants are invited to submit contributions well in advance of the conference to use our time together in sharing and discussing questions arising from these submissions. In addition, we convene and participate in conference panels and welcome members old and new giving papers at the IFTR Conference to contribute to our discussions. Members who are presenting on panels and not submitting directly to the Working Group are encouraged to contact the co-conveners in advance to arrange access to the papers.

In addition, wherever we meet, we seek to engage with local communities through studio visits, practice-led sessions, movement explorations, or performances.

Updates and information about our meeting will be emailed to the group, posted to the Choreography and Corporeality webpage on the IFTR website: https://iftr.org/working-groups/choreography-and-corporeality and posted to our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/392500648061109.

If you are new to the group, please send an email to the convenors at choreographyandcorporeality@gmail.com introducing yourself, and we will add you to our mailing list. We are always delighted to welcome new members!

CFP for 2025

The Choreography and Corporeality Working Group invites proposals for our 2025 sessions in Cologne, 9-13 June 2025. These may address the conference theme of “Performing Carnival,” and/or address any aspect of choreography and corporeality, broadly understood as designing movement of bodies, and the experiential state of having a body or bodies in movement, whether human, non-human, or more-than-human. Papers may also address the theme of “Choreographies and Corporealities of the Global South,” which will be the focus of a book proposal coming from the working group in the coming year. Please mark such chapter suggestions with “(for book proposal)” in the title.

Abstract Submission:

Please submit a 200 to 250-word (max) abstract along with a short bio of 200 words (max) to the Cambridge Core website by 15 January 2025: https://www.cambridge.org/core/membership/iftr/conference. If you want to submit your contribution to the Choreography and Corporeality Working Group, you need to indicate this when you submit your abstract.

In order to submit an abstract, you need to first be a member of IFTR. You can become a member or renew your membership on the Cambridge Core website: https://www.cambridge.org/core/membership/iftr/membership

Participation in the Working Group:

The Working Group circulates and reads contributions in advance of the conference, so that we may spend our time together at the conference in discussion. In addition, wherever we meet, we seek to engage with local communities through studio visits, practice-led sessions, movement explorations, or attending performances together.

We welcome people who are presenting on panels and not submitting directly to the Working Group to attend our sessions. Please contact the co-conveners in advance to arrange access to the papers and information on additional programming. To join the working group sessions as a non-presenting member, please email: choreographyandcorporeality@gmail.com.

Papers:

Completed papers of (maximum) 3000 words should be submitted to the working group convenors about four weeks in advance of the conference (precise date TBA) for scheduling and circulation to the rest of the group to read in advance of our meeting. Do note that we cannot guarantee your inclusion in the conference or working group programme if you do not submit your paper by the deadline or if your paper exceeds the word limit.

Publications

The working group is planning a publication with the working title of “Choreographies and Corporealities of the Global South”.

2021 'Sounding Corporeality', Theatre Research International special issue with the Music Theatre working group, edited by Aoife McGrath (CC), Marcus Cheng Chye Tan (MT), Prarthana Purkayastha (CC), and Tereza Havelková (MT)

2016 Choreography and Corporeality: Relay in Motion, edited by Philipa Rothfield and Thomas F. DeFrantz (New World Choreographies Series, Palgrave Macmillan) https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/978-1-137-54653-1