Reminder: Dance-Related Events and Papers at this year's Annual Meeting

[Lena Leson]

Hi, all. With so much on offer this year, we wanted to re-share the schedule of dance and movement events at the AMS/SMT/SEM annual meeting beginning tomorrow.

Please make special note of our Friday evening session, Dance and the Evolution of Jazz Music in New Orleans, which will feature a keynote address by Brian Harker, Brigham Young University, followed by a workshop led by Giselle Anguizola (Dr. Queen G of New Orleans), beginning at 8pm (additional details below).

And don't forget our annual business meeting—including elections—on Saturday, November 12 at 12:30pm! There will be a virtual participation option for this event; a Zoom link will follow in a separate email with instructions and the meeting agenda.

Thursday, November 10

Dynamics of Play in Music and Dance Analysis // 8:00AM – 10:00AM

• Dancing the Maṇḍala: Embodied Accompaniment, Social Play, and Conversation in Himalayan Music. Mason Brown, Kathmandu University and University of Colorado at Boulder
• Playful Variation in North Indian Courtesan Performance. Sarah Morelli, University of Denver
• Rebellion in the Salsa Club: Challenging Fundamental Music and Dance Structures Through Improvisational Interplay. Rebecca Simpson-Litke, University of Manitoba
• Context in Play: Embracing the Particular in Choreo-musical Conversation. Corinna Campbell, Williams College

Musical Gatherings, Climate Crisis, and Cultural Sustainability // 10:15AM – 11:45AM

• Carbon Footprints and Sustainable Music Cultures: International folk music gatherings in a climate emergency. Sarah-Jane Gibson, York St John University
• Gurl World: How the Global Climate Crisis Sent Utopian Dance Pop to Space. Jerika O'Connor Hayes, Abigail M. Ryan, University of Cincinnati, College Conservatory of Music

Flamenco and its Afterlives: Embodied Archive and Communal Practice //10:15AM–11:45AM

• “Yo no temo a la muerte”: Embodied protest as Resistance to the Death of Flamenco Tablao Villa Rosa. Theresa Goldbach, San Antonio, TX

• Gesturing Toward the Refrain: Using Flamenco Rhythmic and Verse Structures to Research Medieval Iberian Dance. K. Meira Goldberg, Fashion Institute of Technology

• SOS Tablaos Flamencos- Defending Live Flamenco Performance’s “Value” to the Spanish Ministry of Culture. Jennifer McKenzie

Festivals // 1:45PM – 3:45PM

• Chinese Opera for the Vegetarian Festival in Post-pandemic Thailand—A Localized Metaphor for a Healthy Lifestyle. Xiaorong Yuan, University of California, Los Angeles
• Music, Dance, Land Back: the Resurgent Efficacy of Métis Cultural Festivals. Monique Giroux, University of Lethbridge
• Legacies of Mardi Gras: Minneapolis Aquatennial and Milwaukee Summerfest. Andrew Martin, Inver Hills College
• Music Moves Europe: EU Cultural Policy on Festival Stages at Europe's Northern Fringe. Lucas Aaron Henry, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Taiwanese Indigeneity: Language, Ritual, Eco-Performance, and Body // 1:45PM – 3:45PM Music and language (self-)revitalization and teaching for Pinuyumayan teachers in Taiwan. Shura Ng Taylor, National Taiwan University Icowa ko Lalan: Indigenous Musical Mixing as a Speculative Practice of Wayfinding. DJ Hatfield, National Taiwan University Call and Response between Voice and Body: Expressing Village Identity Through an Austronesian Taiwanese Chant-and-Dance. Chun-bin Chen, Taipei National University of the Arts Music and Taiwan's transition from a "garbage island" to an island of green. Nancy Guy, University of California, San Diego

Dance in the Early Twentieth Century // 04:00PM – 04:50PM

• Dancing Games or Playing Ballet? Soviet Sporting Culture in The Golden Age. Laura Kennedy, Furman University
• “La France marche dans un rythme glorieux”: Metaphors of Immigration and Colonization in the Tango Craze of 1913. Sophie Benn, Butler University
• Northern Exoticism, Northern Modernism: Ice Maiden (1927). Patricia Sasser, Furman University

Ecologies of Community: Shareholders, Kin, and Collaborators // 4:00PM – 5:30PM

• The Simultaneity of Binarity and Queerness in Opera’s Creation: A Rehearsal Ethnography of Sivan Eldar’s Like Flesh. Lea Luka Tiziana Sikau, Cambridge University, UK
• From Farm Shares to Jazz Shares: Alternative Community-based Music Presenting in Western Massachusetts. Jason Robinson, Amherst College
• “Less of a Performance, than a Kinship”: Inuit Drum Dance, Cultural Competence, and the Metacommunication of Ihuma in the Inuit Community of Ulukhaktok. Timothy Edward Murray, University of Florida

Zydeco and Cajun Dance Workshop // 7:30PM – 8:30PM

Sponsored by the SEM Dance, Movement, and Gesture Section and the SMT Dance and Music Interest Group

SMT Dance and Movement Interest Group Meeting // 8:30PM – 9:30PM

Friday, November 11

Grooving Political Discontent // 9:00AM – 10:30AM

• Groove Politics: Pleasure and Participation in Cuban Dance Music. Kjetil Klette Boehler, University of South-East Norway
• Sununu: Contesting Refugee Representations through Music in the Third Space. Katelin Nicole Webster, The Ohio State University
• “Dance ’til you drop, boogie ’til you puke”: Endurance as Value in Philip Glass and Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room. Anne Searcy, University of Washington

New Analytical Perspectives on Hip-Hop, EDM, and Post-Millennial Pop // 2:15PM – 5:30PM

• Inter-Rotational Form in Trap-Influenced Hip-Hop. Stephen Gomez-Peck, University of Alabama
• “After ‘After-the-end’”: Poetics of Evaded Closure in Post-Millennial Popular Music. Nathan Alexander Cobb, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Enjambment and Related Phenomena in Rap Delivery. Mitchell Ohriner, University of Denver
• Form as Process in Electronic Dance Music: Two Case Studies. Hannah Benoit, McGill University
  
• Music Analysis and the Politics of Relatability: Listening to Mitski’s Be the Cowboy. Toru Momii, Harvard University
  
• Squelching, Wobbling, and Whirring: Short Continuous Processes in Electronic Dance Music. Jeremy W. Smith, The Ohio State University

Dance and the Evolution of Jazz Music in New Orleans // 8:00PM – 10:00PM

Brian Harker, Brigham Young University; Giselle Anguizola, New Orleans; Christi Jay Wells, Arizona State University

“A great drummer dances sitting down. A great tap-dancer drums standing up” (Malone 1996, 95). The jazz critic Whitney Balliett wrote this chicken-and-egg adage in a 1973 obituary for Baby Laurence, a tap-dancer who collaborated with some of jazz music's greatest pioneers. When jazz emerged in New Orleans, dance surrounded it on all sides. Early jazz drew on previous dance music including brass-band marches from Mardi Gras parades, African rhythms from Congo Square, French Quadrilles, and Afro-Cuban habanera or contradanza. Significantly, early jazz was played for dancing at dance halls, and the embodiment inherent in it ignited creativity in both dancers and musicians. Last, but certainly not least, often the best jazz musicians were also dancers, and they described the rhythms and attitudes of dance as central to their conception of the music.

Several scholars have brought attention to the symbiotic relationship between jazz and dance from its roots through the bebop era (Hazzard-Gordon 1990, Malone 1996, Harker 2008, Guarino and Oliver 2014, Cockrell 2019, Wells 2021), but for many readers without dance experience, the connections between music and dance that provide the foundations of jazz remain abstract. Today, jazz is often heard by seated audiences at concerts, or it is disembodied entirely, heard on the radio or piped into cafes, bookstores, and wine bars.

This special session, sponsored by the Music and Dance Study Group (MDSG), will combine a scholarly presentation on the intertwined history of dance and jazz music with a dance workshop that will help attendees understand through their bodies the impact of dance on jazz music. The keynote address (Brian Harker, Brigham Young University) will be 45 minutes long with 15 minutes for questions, and the workshop (with introductory remarks by Christi Jay Wells, Arizona State University) will take 50 minutes. We had originally planned that the workshop would be led by the New-Orleans-based dancer Darold Alexander. The time scheduled for this session unfortunately conflicted with one of Darold's standing gigs, and we are grateful that his accomplished colleague Giselle Anguizola has generously agreed to step in to lead this workshop after the program was finalized.

The location of the American Musicological Society’s 2022 meeting in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz and an epicenter of American dance culture over the last two centuries, provides a unique opportunity to revitalize our understanding of the connection between music and dance in the history of jazz.

Organized by the AMS Music and Dance Study Group

Saturday, November 12

Embodiment // 9:00AM – 10:30AM

• Embodying Sexual Abuse in Voice: Babbitt’s Philomel. Jessica Anne Sommer, Lawrence University
• Some Embodied Poetics of EQ and Compression. William Mason, Wheaton College
• Beyond the Audible: Embodied Choreographic Syncopations in Rhythm Tap Dance. Rachel Gain, Yale University

SEM Dance, Movement, and Gesture Section Business Meeting // 12:15PM – 1:15PM

AMS Music and Dance Study Group Business Meeting // 12:30PM – 2:00PM

Remote participation option; Zoom link and other details to follow

Sunday, November 13

From Radio to Social Media // 10:45AM – 12:15PM

• "Our Flag Will Never Fall": Exploring the Role of Music Radio Broadcasting in 20th-Century Kurdish Resistance Efforts. Jon Edward Bullock, Yale Institute of Sacred Music
• “Listeners’ Ideal National Barn Dance:” Musical Personae and Downhome Virtuosity on 1930s Radio. David VanderHamm, Johnson County Community College
• Nomadic Listening: Tuareg Subjectivity in Niger across Radio, Cassette, and Social Media. Eric J. Schmidt, Boston University

Ethnographies of Pedagogy // 10:45AM – 12:15PM

• Teaching/Learning Arab Music in the Present-Day: The Muwashshah as the Basis for an Intersectional Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy. Ziyad Khan Marcus, University of Alberta
• Talent in Two First Notes: Ethnographic Method and Teaching Method in Two Violin Lessons. Lindsay J. Wright, Yale University
• Cecil Sharp Past and Present: A Case Study of Contemporary Morris Dance Transmission and Ideology. L. Clayton Dahm, University of Washington

Looking forward to seeing you all soon, 

Lena (secretary-treasurer), Rebecca and Stephen (co-chairs)

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Lena Leson (she/her)

Visiting Assistant Professor of Music, Dickinson College

PhD, University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance