The act of printing The Act of Study

A printable version of the Act of Study in now online.

For those without printers, copies available at the reference library and at Dancemakers

Thanks everyone for their help - see you Monday the 29th. Read Full Post...

Thinking Out Loud – the Study Group launches

Dancemakers and The Dance Current invite you to 

Thinking Out Loud – the Study Group, launching at 6:30pm, Tuesday September 29 at the Dancemakers’ Centre for Creation with an introductory meeting and discussion of Paulo Freire's The Act of Study. (see below for information on getting the article)

Thinking Out Loud responds to our desire to read and talk together. To create a space in Toronto for a meeting between contemporary dance and contemporary thinking in an open, casual and critically supportive environment. An environment that includes snacks and beverages of varying types.

The mostly monthly meetings will each introduce a topic through a close reading of one or two articles and their relation to a specific artist and their practice. Articles will be announced a month before and available online or at Dancemakers.

We encourage any and all to join us, regardless of experience level or background. We like people from other fields (art, social sciences etc…) and we know that for many people this could be a very new thing. We will try to keep all of this in mind. All we ask for is a curiosity and willingness to read and participate.

Please join us on the 29^th to learn more.
And if you're coming- can you let us know? So we can have the right number of cookies?

If you are interested but unable to come on the 29^th – send me an email and I’ll keep you in the loop.

The full selection of topics and articles is still in development - and participant input will be important.

Information on the article for the 29^th below,

Hope to hear from you soon!

Jacob Zimmer, Dancemakers
and Megan Andrews, The Dance Current

Paulo Freire's The Act of Study from:
Freire, Paulo. The politics of education : culture, power, and liberation. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey, 1985.

Hard copies will be available at the Dancemakers office after Thursday September 17^th 

The book is also at the Toronto Reference Library -

and available online here* – unfortunately you can’t print it.

*signing up for an a.aaaarg.org is required to get the pdf  - and is a very good idea anyways - we may continue to use it as a way of sharing texts - and there are lots of great texts there

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Study group part 2

Following up on the Dancemakers study group (original call for interest)

On some technical things: The consensus seems to be for something once a month – which seems right. Mostly likely a weekday evening.

On a broader level I’d like to get some ideas of what areas people might be interested in studying.

While dance will be the frame for the group, I would like it to be a interdisciplinary approach to that. Not only between disciplines of art practice, but also of fields outside of art-making (social sciences etc…)

Some things I’ve thought of - they are broad and somewhat theoretical, please feel free to comment on areas of focus too – and really – I want this to be lead by the curiosities of the group, so please add your own.

The nature of “performance” – including performance studies and gender theory background. The first chapter of Diana Taylor’s book for example.

Some things about words we (especially at Dancemakers use): Contemporary (what do we mean? what do others mean?) Collaborative (how, why)

Aesthetics (how people talk, think about aesthetics) – Dave Hickey’s Invisible Dragon, a book on beauty in art comes to mind.

Any the of these subjects could be a year in themselves, but I imagine a series of shorted readings, articles and chapters rather than books.

Ancillary field trips could also be planned…

thoughts?

also, please send this on to anyone else might be interested. Read Full Post...

Reading group input wanted

Request for interest / feedback
Study Group – but in a good way

Dancemakers is interested in starting and facilitating some kind of on-going peer-to-peer discussion / reading / learning group.

It might include assigned readings, discussions of those readings, special guests, field trips, show and tells and other things.

We’d like it to be broad – visual art, architecture, games, social theory, performance criticism, gardening, radio, what ever our curiosity finds – all relating back to making and performing dances and other things in the early days of the century.

This is a response to the lack of structured group learning after (or maybe even during) our formal training.

We’d like to make sure it stays fun (even if sometimes in the “hard fun” sense) open to lots of experience levels while developing a high level of conversation, thinking and doing – so suggestions on that would be great.

Basically, at this point we’d like to know if anyone would be interested in such a thing, and what kind of thing would be most interesting.

For example:
How often? (every 2 weeks, monthly?)
Day / Time (Monday nights etc…)
How long?
What subjects?
(What) Would you be able / willing to pay?
What might make you more interested?
Would you commit to a series?

You can leave thoughts in the comments or email jacob@dancemakers.org

Thanks very much
Jacob Read Full Post...