Today was my presentation of Renaissance dance at the performance studies conference at Northwestern University. My paper went okay (I think) though the screen they provided was much smaller than what I was expecting for my slides. There were a couple of interesting questions from the audience. One person asked about the portrayal of non-Europeans in European dance, which I was able to link to portrayals of Turkishness in some dances by Arbeau.
In my session, there was also a very interesting paper by Ameera Nimjee on her experience with Kathak, a form of Indian classical dance. We also had an interesting conversation about Bharatanatyam, which seems to have taken on new levels of nationalist meaning for Indians in the diaspora, even though in India Bharatanatyam is largely linked just to the southern region of the country.
Mika Lior also delivered a paper entitled "Brokering Corporealities: Orixa Traffic from Salvador to Toronto." It was about Afro-Brazilian performances that are now also done all over the globe. Tomorrow, I head back to New York. (But not to do Orixa performances.)
