The Dancing Otherwise Network invites you to join the first of a series of AHRC-funded public events around the theme of Mapping the Dance Pluriverse. Listen to others, share your ideas and engage in imagining how we may foster inclusive, entangled modes of collective working that might lead to a more equitable UK dance ecology.
The Dancing Otherwise network engages dance practice-research with the interrogation of socio-political themes of pluriversality, inclusion and decolonisation to invoke physical and conceptual border crossings with interdisciplinary discourses and envision new and experimental modellings of UK dance ecosystems. In order to embody this aim, the below programme includes thinkers and practitioners both within and beyond dance, in order to facilitate this kind of cross-border thinking. We are thrilled to share more about the speakers here.
Reserve a free ticket for the event (people from all backgrounds and experiences are welcome): https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mapping-the-dance-pluriverse-tickets-767528467307?aff=oddtdtcreator
Keynote speakers
Keynote 1: Katia Valenzuela Fuentes
Bio: Katia Valenzuela-Fuentes is assistant professor at the Department of Sociology, Universidad de Concepción, Chile, and researcher at the Centre for Sustainable Urban Development – CEDEUS Chile. She completed a PhD in Politics at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. As an activist researcher, her work has focused on Latin American social movements, political ecology, prefigurative politics and participatory action research. She is currently studying the politics from below which emerged during the Chilean October uprising and how this process became a seedbed for diverse autonomous and horizontal movements across Chile.
Keynote 2: Ashish Kothari
Bio: Founder-member, Kalpavriksh; member, many people’s movements. Taught, Indian Institute of Public Administration; coordinated India’s National Biodiversity Strategy & Action Plan, served on boards of Greenpeace International & India, ICCA Consortium; judge on International Tribunal on Rights of Nature. Helps coordinate Vikalp Sangam (www.vikalpsangam.org), Global Tapestry of Alternatives (www.globaltapestryofalternatives.org), & Radical Ecological Democracy (www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org). Co-author/co-editor, Churning the Earth, Alternative Futures, and Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary
Kalpavriksh | Vikalp Sangam | Radical Ecological Democracy | Global Tapestry of Alternatives | https://ashishkothari51.blogspot.com |Twitter LinkedIn Instagram Facebook
Keynote 3: Bayo Akomolafe
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide initiative that seeks to convene communities in new ways in response to the critical, civilizational challenges we face as a species. He is host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia).
In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California’s (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He is also the inaugural Special Fellow of the Schumacher Centre for New Economics and the Inaugural Special Fellow for the Aspen Institute. He has been Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany, and Visiting Critic-in-Residence for the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles (2023).
He is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and has been Commencement Speaker in two universities convocation events. He is also the recipient of the New Thought Leadership Award 2021 and the Excellence in Ethnocultural Psychotherapy Award by the African Mental Health Summit 2022. In a ceremony in July 2023, the City of Portland (Maine, USA) awarded Dr. Akomolafe with the symbolic ‘Key to the City’ in recognition of his planet-wide work and achievements.
Dr. Akomolafe is a Member of the Club of Rome, a Fellow for the Royal Society of Arts in the UK, and an Ambassador for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. www.bayoakomolafe.net | www.emergencenetwork.org
Conversations: Speakers
Conversation 1: Alexandrina Hemsley | Rosie Heafford | Dani Abulhawa
Conversation 2: Pawlet Brookes | Callum Anderson | Julia Pond
Conversation 3: Emilyn Claid | Minou Tsambika Polleros | Chinasa Vivian Ezugha | Wieke Eringa
Conversation 4: Thea Stanton | Sandie Bourne | H2dance (Heidi Rustgaard, Hanna Gillgren)
Conversation 5: Athina Vahla | Stefan Jovanovic | Orrow Bell
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