Interdisciplinary Performance Symposium, School of Dance

Photo of Tania Isaac by Colin Lenton courtesy of the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage

The Interdisciplinary Performance Symposium will be held on October 11th from 9am – 5pm in Montgomery Hall. The event will bring together a variety of academic disciplines across FSU’s campus to share performance research. The co-chairs of the symposium are School of Dance MFA candidate, Sarah Wilcoxon, and PhD candidate in Musicology in the College of Music, Matt DelCiampo. Initially inspired by informal research meetings between their respective areas, Wilcoxon and DelCiampo envisioned a broader and more formal arena for this interdisciplinary dialogue. The symposium is made possible by generous support from The Graduate School, the School of Dance, and the Center for the Music of the Americas. The day will include research presentations, plenary sessions, a brown bag lunch, dessert reception, and a keynote presentation by Tania Isaac.

Tania Isaac is a Caribbean-American dancer/choreographer who fuses choreography with personal documentary and social commentary. She grapples with identity, post-colonial issues, feminism and juxtapositions of European and African influences. Isaac received her MFA in dance from Temple University in 2000. Her most recent writing is included in Susanna Sloat’s anthology Making Caribbean Dance (University Press of Florida, 2010). Isaac is a former member of David Dorfman Dance, Urban Bush Women and Rennie Harris Puremovement. She has received grants from the Independence Foundation, Dance Advance, National Performance Network, Leeway Foundation, Harlem Stage Fund for New Work, and is the recipient of a 2011 Pew Charitable Trusts Artist Fellowship.

Isaac’s current work is a groundbreaking exploration of creative method she calls the “Open Notebook“ a way of turning a room into a laboratory of investigation and participatory dance. The “Open Notebook” was developed and expanded through residencies at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography in 2006 and 2009. She will be creating an open notebook for symposium participants to experience in Montgomery Hall on October 11th.

While the discussion about this event began in the College of Music and the School of Dance, the symposium invites scholars studying in music, dance, theatre, anthropology, sociology, communication, cultural studies, and any other academic track interested in performance. A brown bag lunch discussion moderated by Matt DelCiampo will feature Carla Peterson of the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, Michael Hayden of the School of Theatre, and Denise Von Glahn of the College of Music focusing on the topic of collaboration. In addition to the brown-bag lunch, panel discussions will encourage cross-disciplinary dialogue, and the symposium will offer a variety of ways for interested parties to engage with each other in a collaborative manner, including research presentations, live performances, and plenary sessions featuring interdisciplinary work.
For more information about the Interdisciplinary Performance Symposium, contact Sarah Wilcoxon at sh13f@my.fsu.edu or Matt DelCiampo at mdelciampo@fsu.edu.