1. Dr Pat Noxolo p.e.p.noxolo@bham.ac.uk www.birmingham.ac.uk/dancingmaps

2. Welcome!
Dancing Maps
short paper by Dr Pat Noxolo (University of Birmingham)
Live dance performances by Ace Dance and Music
African and Caribbean dance now
short paper by 'H' Patten (Koromanti Arts, Canterbury Christ Church University)
African and Caribbean dance: where it has brought us and where it can take us
Panel discussion with 'H' Patten, Desmond Pusey (Ishkoka Arts), and Gail Parmel (Ace Dance and Music).

3. Dancing maps
African and Caribbean dances can function as maps that help us to find direction in our lives
If people take part in learning a few moves it gives us some spatial knowledge in/of our bodies
Short videos of people side by side performing the same move can highlight the energy flows and physical relationships between and around bodies
Seeds in performance by ‘H’ Patten (1992) ‘Ina di Wildanis’
(see my published cartographic analysis of this performance : Noxolo, P. ‘Moving Maps’, in Diasporas and Cultures of Mobilities, Vol 2 Diaspora, Memory and Intimacy, edited by Sarah Barbour, Thomas Lacroix, David Howard et Judith Misrahi-Barak, series PoCoPages, Coll. "Horizons anglophones" (Montpellier : Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée, forthcoming 2015)

4. ‘H’ Patten (1992) ‘Ina di wildanis’

5. ‘H’ Patten (1992) ‘Ina di wildanis’

6. ‘H’ Patten (1992) ‘Ina di wildanis’

7. ‘H’ Patten (1992) ‘Ina di wildanis’

8. ‘H’ Patten (1992) ‘Ina di wildanis’

9. Dancing maps
The spaces that are important to people are not necessarily those of European explorers or of digital mapping tools – they’re the spaces that we carry with us, in our bodies

10. 1. African and Caribbean dances can function as maps that help us to find direction in our lives
Indigenous African and Caribbean maps were often performed (e.g. danced or sung or inhabited); they weren’t only pictures on paper or screen So the idea that a dance is a map is not new…

11. 1. African and Caribbean dances can function as maps that help us to find direction in our lives
…. But it does make us think hard about what we think a map is, and how we can use them
Maps ‘represent and codify spatial knowledge’: anything that displays spatial relationships, and sets out what space means to us has the potential to be thought of as a map (cartographic capacity)
We may need to perform a map, with our bodies, to fully access and understand it
We all have the resources to make maps that are focused on what’s important to us!

12. 2. If people take part in learning a few moves it gives us some spatial knowledge in and of our bodies
People watched the moves, practised them, then videoed themselves doing them
Feeling the moves in their bodies was important – not just which foot first, but how does the dance flow through my body?
Dancing builds awareness of our bodies as spaces through which energies flow (bodyspaces)

13. 3. Dancing maps highlight the energy flows and physical relationships between bodies
Seeing the bodies dancing side by side illustrates more clearly (represents and codifies, i.e. maps):
The particular energies of particular dance moves
The particular energies of particular bodies
The intimate ways in which bodies relate to the spaces surrounding them (spatial contexts)

14. Dancing maps
SO: Dancing maps are about understanding our bodies as spaces through and around which energies flow African and Caribbean dance are able to help us build that understanding (cartographic capacity) AND ULTIMATELY: Dancing maps are about finding a place for our bodies and ourselves in an increasingly digitised and disembodied world

15. Dr Pat Noxolo p.e.p.noxolo@bham.ac.uk www.birmingham.ac.uk/dancingmaps