At this conference in Vancouver, the first DSA gathering in Canada and postponed from 2020, presenters will explore dance and activism in localized and transcultural settings, and share strategies for productive change on the stage, street, screen and within the academy.
Vancouver has long been a site of occupation, exchange, defiance and resilience. From time immemorial, it has been a location of trade and traversal across coastal Indigenous communities of the Pacific and, in more recent centuries, a place where diverse cultures from across the world have encountered each other and interacted through colonial pathways and settlement. In the same way that Vancouver serves as a powerful and complex example of both vexing histories and determined hope, participants will demonstrate how dance intervenes in a range of issues, including race relations, gender-related rights, and land disputes. We will share the frameworks of dancing and dance scholarship that provide space for optimism, activism, and social movement.