Cheryl Stock

These Proceedings, arising from the 2008 World Dance Alliance Global Summit, reflect both its spirit and diversity, re-appraising what dance is and might be in the 21st century. Through 53 papers from 14 countries in the Americas, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, the authors—ranging from seasoned scholars to emerging artists publishing for the first time—span the perspectives of academics, educators, performance and community artists, health professionals and cognitive scientists; predominantly from dance but also from film, visual arts, science, performance and philosophy.

This section presents diverse experiences and concepts to further our understanding of embodied cognition and embodied knowing; incorporating notions of stillness, becoming, sensory awareness, conditions of liminality, kinaesthetic empathy and somatic and therapeutic practices as well as holistic approaches to the theory/practice nexus.

A conversation between dance and visual arts, a collaboration of Japanese traditional with Australian contemporary movement, viewpoints on experimenting with traditional forms and an intercultural project in Malaysia form the basis for papers in this section.

These papers focus on the changing nature of dance pedagogy; exploring questions of identity and tradition, embodied learning to teach theory in the classroom, the act of dancing as a research strategy, cultural inclusivity as the heart of curriculum development and effective applications of digital technologies.

Strategies for sustaining dance in the following papers occur from two perspectives: culturally in terms of preserving and contemporising traditions in India, Cambodia and Thailand; and pedagogically through strategies for life-long learning in the tertiary sector and improved teacher training for children.

These papers investigate the evolution and transformation of performance and choreographic practices from a range of perspectives; in culturally specific traditions, via audience engagement, through re-versioning strategies, and in our relationship with digital and interactive technologies. Re-centring movement in various contexts of genre, site, community settings and intentionality further inform these perspectives.

Dr Cheryl Stock (Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane) talks about a collaborative site-specific project in 2002 which brought together ten independent artists to rekindle the unique experience of live performance—one that the virtual world simply cannot replicate.

Assessment frames the focus of this paper, which emerges from our collaborative research, Dancing Between Diversity and Consistency: Refining Assessment in Postgraduate Degrees in Dance, funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC). We examine the attributes of danced ‘doctorateness’, giving special attention to those factors in the Australian environment, which may endow resilience to concepts of excellence, independent thinking and originality when kinaesthetic knowledge becomes pivotal to research. Have the small pool of examiners and relationships between academia and the professional artistic environment shaped these doctorates in a particular way? Can these perspectives illuminate and forge parameters by which to legitimate danced insight? These and related issues are interrogated giving voice to supervisors, research deans, candidates and industry professionals across Australia who participated in this research project.