Henry Daniel: In the Middle ... Somewhat Dislocated

The SCA's Henry Daniel has contributed a text and video to the blog run by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Titled In the Middle...Somewhat Dislocated, the text draws partly on the work of the same name Daniel presented at the Black Canadian Studies Association conference that was part of the 2019 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of British Columbia (which Daniel remade in video form, which is linked to via the blog post), as well as on his keynote paper “Decolonizing Bodies: Engaging Performance,” which he presented at the 3rd Biennial International Dance Conference at the University of the West Indies at the Errol Barrow Center for Creative Imagination, Cave Hill Campus, in Barbados.

Here's Daniel's opening paragraph:

I am an academic; a dance and performance studies scholar. But I am also a choreographer and  performer with an extensive international career in the professional world. My academic life in Canada has therefore been an interesting exercise in bridging these two vastly different spaces. For example, in almost two decades of living and working in this country, I have seen the term Research/Creation go through a number of transformations as academia continues to grapple with the idea of Art as a research enterprise.

Read the complete blog post HERE.

The music in Daniel's video re-staging of the work is by Vanese VJ Smith (Pursuit Grooves), who also gave a talk at the SCA in 2019, from her album Felt Armour (2018). Visit her Bandcamp page HERE.

Always busy, Daniel will be presenting a lecture and workshop on his ongoing Contemporary Nomads project and the challenges and possibilities of performance-as-research and artistic research/creation in Linz, Austria, this April, 2020, at the invitation of the doctoral programs of the Bruckner University and the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. Click HERE for more information. He will also be presenting a talk titled "The Human Body Moving as Analogy for Thought Unfolding" as part of the Knowing in Performing Lecture Series at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, on April 21, 2020. Click HERE for more information.