13th Dance Days Chania & School of Architecture and Engineering of the Technical University of Crete
23 July – Chania / Center of Mediterranean Architecture
In the framework of the International Contemporary Dance Festival “Dance Days Chania”, in collaboration with the School of Architecture and Engineering of the Technical University of Crete (Greece)
Open Call
Dance and space share a common rhythm of experiential expression through corporeal mediation. The body is the horizon of our orientation in the world, the living carrier of our perceptual relationship with it that allows for the appropriation of the space we inhabit through the immediacy of its presence. Especially in its public version, space is the field of encounter of individual and collective intentions, claims, creative actions, ruptures and affects. Public space is a complex field of conflicting desires and symbolic exchanges; it is the specific field that constitutes our social bond, our individual and collective negotiation.
Today, the physical perception in public space crosses the boundaries between vision and tactility, thinking and feeling. Spatial experience is increasingly fragmented and mediated as the public space is threatened or even expanded by the digital and virtual space that is more and more becoming an integral part of our body-spatial relations and experiences. In recent years, the congregation of bodies in public space for claiming fundamental human rights, rooted in the acceptance of diversity and in social and economic equality, unfolded the potential of the body to re-claim the city both performatively but most importantly politically. How do performance and dance artists respond to the ever-shrinking and hybrid public space, giving us the opportunity for new experiences and shared spaces of gathering, confrontation or attunement?
The one-day conference under the title The Body in Public Space as Experience and Praxis will seek to contribute to the redefinition of public space and our relationship with it by promoting a dialogue between the various ways in which space is “practised” and experienced through the body. We invite scholars, researchers and artists (indicatively but not exclusively) from the fields of Architecture, Dance, Performance and Digital Arts, Phenomenology, Social Geography and Anthropology to submit their abstracts for papers.
How can dance and space mutually interact and offer a “chor(e)o-poiesis”? In what ways can such an approach lead to aesthetic and political acts and forms of experience that create new ways of inhabiting our collective space? How can it provide grounded responses to the massive replacement of public space by the digital – public sphere?
Guidelines for submitting proposals
You can send your abstract to [email protected] by 05 June 2023.
The abstract is requested to be in a Word file format from 200 to 350 words in Arial/Times New Roman font and should include:
– The title of the submission
– The name(s) of the author(s), title(s) and contact details
– How the proposal responds to the conference theme and its objectives
– 3 to 5 keywords and up to 10 references.
The language of the presentations can be in Greek or English.
Abstracts will be evaluated by the members of the Scientific Committee.
Participation in the conference will be (preferably) by physical presence and the programme will include presentations by invited speakers, workshops and events in the city.
Important dates:
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 05 June 2023
Notification of acceptance of abstracts: 15 June 2023
Scientific committee: Alexandros Vazakas (Architect, Associate Professor TUC), Dr. Ariadne Mikou (Architect, Dance Researcher), Dr. Steriani Tsintziloni (Dance Theorist, Curator, HOU), Sofia Falierou (Choreographer, Artistic Director of Dance Days Chania), Dimitra Chatzisavva (Architect, Associate Professor TUC).
Organizing parties: Dance Days Chania, School of Architecture and Engineering of the Technical University of Crete
Photo: SOUTH Space for Photography – Giannis Karounis/ “Orbital”