Curatorial Practices for Intersectional Programming

Abstract

Screendance finds its roots in the traditions of concert dance, museum culture, and film festivals. Film festivals -from which we borrow the structure for programming screendance -boast a history of discrimination towards bodies of color, varied gender expressions, bodies of different abilities, and more. Through an exploration of the history and socio-cultural context of film festivals in the west and dialogue with curators and directors from a handful of screendance festivals across the United States, this piece will present a set of curatorial challenges particular to our field, the creative solutions being explored by presenters and champions of screendance, and a consideration of where the field falls short, so we can better mitigate issues of underrepresentation of marginalized groups in screendance spaces.

Playing with meaning: Productive frictions between gaming and dancing in Bound

“…The game calls into question the criteria we use to evaluate not only video games but also concert dance and screendance. If the screendance community ‘finds its roots in the traditions of concert dance, museum culture, and film festivals’, as Cara Hagan writes in the 2018 issue of the International Journal of Screendance , what could happen to the criteria we employ if we expand those roots to include games and their transmedia components?…”