Schedule & Registration

AY 2026-2027 on PRACTICE

For AY26-27 the theme of the Chicago Dance Studies Working Group (CDSWG) is dance/studies PRACTICE(S). Practice, as a structured set of established concepts/assumptions/principles, sets a blueprint for how we think and move in/through dance.  CDSWG takes up practice in its continued effort to bridge a forced divide between academic ideas and embodied artistic action.  How are the practices of dance studies overlapping and colliding with the practices of dance?  Practice conjures the repetition of rehearsal, a space that Victor Turner sees as liminal - a safe space for critique and cultural remaking. CDSWG will meet four times to rehearse and critique the dance/studies practices of citation, curation, dramaturgy, writing - and always, community. As in rehearsal, the practice is preliminary and exploratory and all are welcome.

REGISTER HERE (forthcoming) / ACCESS READINGS HERE (forthcoming)

October 6, 2026 (5:30-7pm) - Citational Practice @MCA

Lizzie Leopold and Melissa Blanco Borelli

December 8, 2026  (5:30-7pm) - Curatorial Practice @MCA

Tara Aisha Willis and Julia Rhoads

February 16, 2027  (5:30-7pm) - Dramaturgical Practice 

(NOTE: meeting at the Logan Center for the Arts at UChicago)

Joanna Furnans and Fabien Maltais-Bayda

April 13, 2027  (5:30-7pm) - Writing Practice @MCA

Meida McNeal and J'Sun Howard

June 8, 2027  (5:30-7pm) - Community Practice

Maggie Bridger and Joe Bowie

Past Events

AY 2025-2026 on CRISIS

October 7, 2025

Lizzie Leopold and Jenna Pearse-Pollock (crisis as concept)

December 9, 2025

Maggie Bridger (on resistance and world building practices)

March 10, 2026

Susan Manning and Caroline Shadle (crisis in modernist dance histories)

April 28, 2026

Yolanda Cesta Cursach Montilla (how intercultural encounter and religious pluralism are expressed through artistic practice - to align with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui at the Harris Theater)

May 27, 2025

Wrap up and planning for subsequent year—convening committee as collective hosts

AY 2024-2025 on ABSTRACTION

October 22, 2024

Juliet Bellow and Nell Andrew, “Inventing Abstraction? Modernist Dance in Europe,” The Modernist World—discussion moderated by Susan Manning + Julia Rhoads

December 3, 2024

David Getsy, “Ten Queer Theses on Abstraction”—discussion moderated by Maggie Bridger

March 4, 2025

Miguel Gutierrez, “Does Abstraction Belong to White People?”—discussion moderated by Joe Bowie + Caroline Shadle

April 8, 2025

Adrienne Edwards, “Blackness in Abstraction”—discussion moderated by Tina Post + Ayo Walker

May 27, 2025

Wrap up and planning for subsequent year—convening committee as collective hosts

AY 2023-2024 - New Essays in Dance Studies

October 3, 2023

Adeyemi, Kemi. “The Practice of Slowness: Black Queer Women and the Right to the City” 

November 14, 2023

Jackson, Naomi M. “Educating Dancers with Dignity, Respect, and Care .” 

February 6, 2024

Osterweis, Ariel. "The muse of virtuosity: Desmond Richardson, race, and choreographic falsetto." 

April 2, 2024

Kraut, Anthea. “The Dance-In and the Re/Production of White Corporeality.”

May 21, 2024

Sedgman, Kirsty. On the Reasonable Audience. 

AY 2022-2023 - New Books in Dance Studies

October 25, 2022

Heat and Alterity in Contemporary Dance: South-South Choreographies by Ananya Chatterjea

December 13, 2022

Funding Bodies by Sarah Wilbur

February 28, 2023 (Date Changed!)

Eco Soma by Petra Kuppers

April 18, 2023

Dark Matter in Breaking Cyphers: The Life of Africanist Aesthetics in Global Hip Hop by Imani Kai Johnson

June 20, 2023

 What A Body Can Do and Blue Sky Body by Ben Spatz