Future Bodies: The Dance that Persists

Welcome to the virtual viewing space for the inaugural symposium of MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism.

Launched two years ago, the MA enables a global learning exchange between a community of dance artists working towards social justice and change in their local contexts.

Our Future Bodies symposium centres our first graduating cohort who present their research projects. The second cohort of students share creative documentations of their international collaborations. The Curatorial Team, who lead the course, offer invitations to move, make and reflect together. Our keynote listeners: invited academics with related research in protest, eco-somatic practice, speculative futures, and conceptual practices in dance, will engage in deep listening and respond to the student’s research.

The learning community is based in many different countries and thus the symposium seeks to create encounter across time zones – making the impossible, possible.

To persist is to remain steadfast in the face of opposition, to continue to dance in-spite of it all. We can learn from the persistent plants that continue to bear fruit through winter and create root systems and seed banks to sustain themselves in unfavourable conditions. Come water the seeds with us. If you are feeling persistent spend twelve hours, or visit for an hour or two.

— The learning community of MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism