Patricia Noxolo - Urban Laboratory Lecture Series

Flat Out! Dancing the City at a Time of Austerity

This paper reflects on and challenges existing paradigms around movement and mobilisation in and with the city. 

This focus is provoked by a community arts project called 'Flat Out', in which the researcher collaborated with the Drum Intercultural Arts Centre and Birmingham Royal Ballet, on a dance project with members of the community in the Lozells and Newtown areas of the city.

The paper pushes for more deeply embodied and more highly politicised versions of place ballet and urban vortex, introducing a concept of choreography that comes from dance practice, and working through decolonial and postcolonial theories.  A brief auto-ethnography of the author's Birmingham childhood illustrates that movement repertoires are diverse, historically and spatially conditioned, and, in the case of Birmingham, located within an ongoing 'decolonial churn'.

• Dr Patricia Noxolo is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Birmingham. Her research is at the confluence of international development, culture and in/security, and uses postcolonial, discursive and literary approaches to explore the spatialities of a range of Caribbean and British cultural practices. She is lead researcher on the Leverhulme-funded project 'Caribbean In/Securities and Creativity'. Other recent work has focused on: community dance and austerity; on theorisations of space in Caribbean literature; on Caribbean laughter and materialities; and on African-Caribbean dance as embodied mapping.
• This lecture is chaired by Dr Ellie Cosgrave (UCL STEaPP / UCL Urban Laboratory)
  

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Urban Laboratory Lecture Series

The talk is part of our new autumn fortnightly lecture series, investigating the meaning and renewed relevance of the term 'urban laboratory'. The lectures are free and no booking is required. Step free access to the room at 26 Bedford Way.

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