Course content

The module "Dance, displacement, diaspora" is envisaged as the contextual frame to interrogate issues of migration and heritage. This was an extremely successful, innovative part of Choreomundus 2020-2025 compared to Choreomundus 2012-2018 and 2017-2021. It is further developed for the Choreomundus cycle 2024-2030.

Our rationale for the course is the following: displaced people cannot take tangible heritage with themselves, they are forced to leave their homes, land etc. behind them. Yet wherever people move, either in refugee camps or in diaspora organisations, they find a way to re-invigorate their intangible heritage, as do those displaced and then returned to homeland. Memories, traditions, songs and dances do, however, travel, maintaining links to home and country of origin. In this new course we will focus on a range of case studies to address dancing communities in camps for displaced people, in diaspora or reconstituted localities. Moreover, the course problematises the ways in which contemporary performances of earlier dance forms are enacted and examines their contemporary transmission within global diasporas, thus questioning how heritage is continuously recreated.

Learning outcome

Students who successfully complete this module will have acquired:

Knowledge

• An understanding of the fluidity of the concepts of dance heritage and community, diaspora and displacement
• Theory on learning and transmission of dance in the context of global migration

Skills

• Tools for the study of global transmission processes in dance education
• Methodological tools for netnographic research
• Principles in collecting of movement material from recordings and online ethnography

Learning methods and activities

Lectures, seminars and supervised practical and methodological exercises in small groups.

Instruction is obligatory and demands minimum 80% attendance.

Compulsory assignments

• Attendance

Further on evaluation

A 4000 words essay (about 10 pages) based on online research (netnography) of a selected community. One may pick a community from one’s home country. A description of the community and an argument which proves that the community is a diasporic or a displaced one must be provided. An essay must be grounded in interviews and detailed dance descriptions. One must use the approaches, methods, types of sources, concepts, and so on presented by the teachers during the course. Analysis and discussion must be supported by appropriate readings, explicitly quoting a minimum of ten texts, some of which must be from the reading list. Appendices (e. g. interview transcriptions, analysis tables) are not included in the word count and must be consistently referred to in the main text.

Specific conditions

Required previous knowledge

Requires admission to Choreomundus - International Master in Dance Knowledge, Practice, and Heritage

Course materials

Bauböck, Rainer & Faist, Thomas (2010) Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Faist, Thomas (2010) ‘Diaspora and transnationalism: What kind of dance partners?’ in Rainer Bauböck & Thomas Faist Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Gore, Georgiana (2009) ‘Lost in translation? Cultural shifts, dance experience and meaning’ in Leena Rouhiainen (ed.) Dance - Movement - Mobility. Proceedings of the 9th International NOFOD Conference Tampere, Finland, October 23-26 2008.

Grau, Andrée (2010) ‘Figure skating and the anthropology of dance: The case of Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin’ Anthropological Notebooks 16 (3) 39-59.

Karoblis, Gediminas (2011) ‘Poland and Lithuania: the none-too-easy steps of the Mazurka when Suktinis becomes Krenciolka’. Darbai ir dienos 56: 193-205. Kaunas: Vytautas Magnus Universitety.

Mollenhauer, J. (2022) Cultural Dance in Australia. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.

Quigley, Colin (1985) Close to the Floor: Folk Dance in Newfoundland. St. John's: Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Werbner, Pnina (2005) ‘The translocation of culture: "Community cohesion" and the force of multiculturalism in history’ Sociological Review 53 (4) 745-768.

Werbner, Pnina (2012) ‘Migration and culture’ in Marc R. Rosenblum and Daniel J. Tichenor (eds) Oxford Handbook of the Politics of International Migration.