Thinking through the Arts – Maggie Tonkin

Date: Wednesday 2 October

Time: 6.30pm

Thinking through the Feet

Dance begins and ends with the body. Dance is an orally transmitted art form, in which the dancer’s body functions as an archive. The body not only moves, but it also knows. Contemporary choreography can be thought of as a form of world making, in which the choreographer creates the movement language for the body to speak. Choreographers approach this in various ways, but increasingly rely on the input of dancers to forge the movement language of each work. Drawing on film and archival material, this talk will examine the creation of movement languages by renowned Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard to illustrate how contemporary dance allows the thinking body to speak.

Dr Maggie Tonkin is a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Adelaide, where she publishes and teaches in the areas of nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction. She has a background in dance and writes and reviews for the national dance press. She is the author of two monographs, FIFTY: Half a Century of Australian Dance Theatre (Wakefield Press, 2016) and Angela Carter and Decadence: Critical Fictions/Fictional Critiques (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

Thinking through the Arts is a series of six public lectures on Wednesday evenings in the Hills, exploring the way different mediums and art forms think materially.

Thinking through the Arts is a collaboration between Fabrik and the JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice.

Entry free but bookings essential via Eventbrite

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An open book.