Pedagogies Of Consent, Care And Affirmation
20 January 2024
16.00-21.00 at the ID Lab at the Academy of Theatre and Dance
Guests: Eroca Nicols, Thomas Talawa Prestø, Ilse Ghekiere, Mijke van der Drift, alex blum, Dodi Taveres Borges Leal
Curators and hosts: Joy Mariama Smith and Bojana Mladenović
Dress code: Blue and Gold
The staring time is 16.00 and later entrance will not be possible.
Please, register online
In 2025 SNDO will be reaching an important jubilee. To celebrate half a century of SNDO as a laboratory for dance and performance, we are proudly unfolding a trajectory of public events starting from January 2024. These events are meant to shed the light on SNDO past, present and future but also to serve as ongoing platforms for the research, explorations and knowledges to keep on developing and disseminating in and thorough these encounters.
All events are collaborations with different institutes and partners who support and share SNDO concerns, pedagogical inquiries and our love for being in this world in lively and life-affirming ways. As a choreography program, we are also a laboratory for living freely, which is something we don’t take for granted, but understand as a continuous practice of staying with the work required to act and be with each other in liberatory ways.
The first event in the 50 year SNDO trajectory is titled Pedagogies of Consent, Care and Affirmation and takes place on 20th January at 16.00 in ID Lab at the Academy of Theatre and Dance.
Two things are foundational for this gathering. One is our desire to revisit the conversations we started in 2018 within the On Consent in Dance and Performance event we hosted at the Academy of Theatre and Dance. Up to that point in time barely considered as an ‘issue’ in, what considers itself the contemporary dance and performance scene, the notion of consent firmly nested itself since in the SNDO curriculum. It also inspired other educational and professional institutes to start considering the place of consent in their teaching and art making. Two researchers who spearheaded this research back in 2018 and who continue to advance it in their practice are Eroca Nicols and Joy Mariama Smith. Both will be present in the program sharing with us their current findings, concerns and practices.
The other track we are setting forth with the Pedagogies od Consent, Care and Affirmation is related to the SNDO Care Document, a practical resource on creating and maintaining a safe(r) school culture which was published in 2022. This is a living document in many ways. Certainly because we consider it a never final nor finite, rather a document that is written and rewritten as our insights, pedagogies and worldviews develop, re-assemble and change. The other way this document lives is through this public event. We are proud to get together eight educators, artists and activists who move in and between institutional frameworks and who attempt to uphold ethics amid sharp societal and political divisions, to share their explorations of affirmative pedagogies in teaching, artistic and other work.
Invited to bring their already practiced, theorized and/or lived ways of affirming through centering BIPOC, trans, non-binary, queer, neuro diverse, highly sensitive or other previously overlooked needs and perspectives, Mijke, Dodi, alex, Thomas, Eroca, Ilse, Joy and Bojana will share these through contributions ranging from poetic, performative, lecture-like, exploring concrete examples and practices, future-dreaming/cast-spelling episodes and dialogical sequences.
The event consists of, what can be loosely considered, three parts: panel contributions, panel exchanges, and two performances. In the middle of it we will serve a free soup and later, you can get yourself a drink.
The staring time is 16.00 and later entrance will not be possible.
Dress code for the guests and audience: Blue and Gold.
Biographies
Alex Blum
Alex Blum
alexblum (they/she) is a trans* choreographer, dancer, political educator, and somatic activist based between Copenhagen and Amsterdam, where they graduated from the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in 2023. alex explores the body as a site for politics and dance as a means for the disidentification from power structures. With their artistic work, they look for sensual detours from the grid of identity politics by means of touch, listening, and shared spacetime with critical friends, lovers, and strangers. alex’ work is currently supported by the Nordic Futures Residency and Konsthall C in Stockholm.
*becoming, unfinished, fragmentary, internally contradictory, multiple.
lse Ghekiere
lseGhekiere is an artist and art critic who works as a dancer, writer, researcher and lecturer. She studied dance at the Conservatory of Antwerp and has a MA in Art Sciences from The Free University of Brussels. As a dancer she has worked with, among others, Michèle Anne De Mey, Mette Ingvartsen and Jan Martens. In 2018, she founded ENGAGEMENT ARTS, an artists’ movement that tackles sexual harassment, sexism and abuse of power in the Belgian art world. This platform has made her a spokesperson on these issues, ranging from giving lectures and workshops in art education to speaking for the EU-Parliament. Her own work is deeply research based and explores the tensions between sexual liberation and oppression in the arts. Her critical writing has appeared in publications such as Norsk Shakespeare Tidsskrift, Rekto:Verso and Etcetera Tijdschrift, among others. She works and lives in Oslo and Brussels.
Eroca Nicols
ErocaNicols is a choreographer, a dancer, and a convener of contexts for collective liberation through relation building and embodiment. The teaching, performing and training they do are deeply influenced by their ongoing study of practices including choreography, embodied consent, ritual, community care/disruption and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
Dodi Leal
Dodi Leal is a travesti educator and researcher in Performing Arts. Adjunct Professor at the Centro de Formaçãoem Artes e Comunicação (CFAC) and of the Instituto de Humanidades, Artes e Ciências (IHAC) of the Campus Sosígenes Costa (CSC) of the Universidade Federal do Sul da Bahia (UFSB). PhD in Social Psychology (IP-USP), with doctoral internship in the PhD program in Artistic Studies at the Faculdade de Letras of the Universidade de Coimbra, concentration in the area of Theatre and Performance Studies. Graduated in Performance Studies (CAC/ECA/USP). Habilitated in Film and Video at the Baccalauréatinterdisciplinaireen arts of the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC, Québec-Canada).
Mijke van der Drift
Mijke van der Drift is a philosopher and educator working on ethics, trans studies, and anti-colonial philosophy. Mijke is a tutor at the Royal College of Art, London. Mijke’s work has appeared in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, the Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, in various independent publications as well as chapters in The Emergence of Trans (Routledge 2020), and The New Feminist Literary Studies Reader (Cambridge UP 2020). Van der Drift is founding member of the art collective Red Forest. They have made work for the Milano Triennale (2022), the Helsinki Biennale (2023) as part of their research into Extractivism, Fossil Fascism, and cultures of resistance. With Nat Raha, Mijke is writing Trans Femme Futures (Pluto Press, forthcoming)
Joy Mariama Smith
A native Philadelphian currently based in in Amsterdam, NL, Joy Mariama Smith’s work primarily addresses the conundrum of projected identities in various contexts. A sub-theme, or ongoing question in their work is: What is the interplay between the body and it’s physical environment? They have a multi-modal improvisational practice spanning over 25 years. When they choose to teach, they actively try to uphold inclusive spaces.
Thomas Talawa Prestø
Thomas TalawaPrestø is a prominent dance artist and researcher, renowned for his work in African and Caribbean dance through the creation of the Talawa Technique. As founder of Tabanka Dance Ensemble and a research fellow, he has devoted over 25 years to diversifying the Norwegian art field. Prestø's work, which emphasizes inclusive and decolonial practices, has significantly influenced the dance world, combining practical skills with academic research. He is on track to become a pioneering Ph.D. candidate in Scandinavia, focusing on decolonial dance and performance, further solidifying his role as a leader in this specialized field.
Bojana Mladenović
Bojana Mladenović is artistic director of SNDO - School for New Dance Development, choreography Bachelor at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.
She graduated from DasArts (now DAS Theatre), a postgraduate programme in contemporary performing arts in Amsterdam. After studies, her works were produced at the Frascati Theater in Amsterdam and featured at the Something Raw Festival, Beursschouwburg in Brussels and Xing in Bologna. From 2010-2014, Bojana was the artistic director of Het Veem Theater in Amsterdam, highlighting the work of a new generation of artists in the field of choreography, performance and experimental performing arts. Bojana was born in Belgrade, where she lived and worked as choreographer and performer, and where she was one of the founders of Station - Service for Contemporary Dance, Nomad Dance Academy and Druga Scena. She cherishes her background as a member of Belgrade independent dance and performing arts scene in the nineties and early two-thousands as this created the foundation for all her artistic, curatorial and socially engaged work onwards.
Since 2006 Bojana lives and works in Amsterdam where she initiated and co-curated programmes such as Moving Together: Activism, Art and Education – A Week with Angela Davis, BER-AMS-BXL and the online mapping of the performance field tool, the Performance Platform.
Credits
Pedagogies of Consent, Care and Affirmation is a part of the ongoing Critical Race Research trajectory conducted by Joy Mariama Smith and Bojana Mladenović since 2018. This event is curated in collaboration with the ATD Lectorate Research Month and supported by the Platform 2025. It also marks the celebratory kick-off of the series of public events within the framework of 50 years of SNDO unfolding throughout 2024, leading to the jubilee year in 2025.
- Curation and hosting: Joy Mariama Smith and Bojana Mladenović
- Production coordination: Linda Witpaard and Chantal Mooij
- PR: Evelien van de Sanden, Karina Villafan, Wouter van Loon
Photo credits: Maria Høy Hansen, Dodi Leal personal archive, Pocket Akitt, Sybille Nunez Diaz, Lavinia Pollack, Tim Jannsen, Nellie de Boer. Composite image: Anio Harre
Special thanks to the Research Month curator and head of the ATD Lectorate Laura Cull for her ongoing support and affirmation.