Dance and spectacle exist in tension with each other. This conference invites discussion of their related histories, aesthetics and politics. From movement choirs in ancient Greece to the forms of spectacle in modern Olympic ceremonies; from the Baroque ballets de cour to indigenous corroboree; from protest sit-ins to Yvonne Rainer’s ‘no to spectacle’, the moving body exhibits meaning through choreographies of the visual.

Temporally situated between Beijing 2008 and the London 2012 Olympics, and located close to the metropolitan centre of London, this interdisciplinary event will be a gathering of scholars, artists and practitioners. Our goal is to engage with dance practices, affect and theory, history and the present in order to seek new and relevant understandings of the relationship between dance and spectacle.

We welcome conference papers, panels, roundtables, workshops, films and performances from artists and scholars that address the following, or related, questions:

• What does the idea of spectacle have to say about dance and the act of looking?
• Is there a difference between the spectacle and the spectacular?
• Where exactly is the spectacular located in dance/performance? Is it in the location of a performance,
the technical virtuosity of the dancers, the moments of stillness, or the aural environment? What
makes something ‘spectacular’?
• What other senses are incorporated in our experience and understanding of the ‘spectacular’? What
would a blind person’s construction of spectacle be?
• What are the relationships between theories of the spectacle and the spectacular and theories of dance?
• How has the spectacular been defined in the past? In dance or performance?
• How do popular dance forms engage, reify, or subvert the powers of the visual?
• How does dance use the spectacular as a means to achieve communication between performer and audience?
• What can the term spectacle mean as an artistic and critical starting point when we find ourselves in a
full-blown ‘spectacle society’ (photography, film, TV, digital media, global internet, social networking sites
such as You-Tube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, et al.)?
• How has the refusal of spectacle been mobilised in art practices, either productively or negatively?
• How are dance and spectacle used to hide political tensions? In what ways is the artistic spectacle used to
point to the suppression of spectacles (of waste, war, and mass displacement?)