Summer Scholars Lunchtime Talks

Join us for two lunchtime talks.

Jumbie Dance – Writings of Resistance

In researching the slave history of Montserrat, it is not surprising to note that the African spiritual practices of the island in the 18th to 20th centuries have been systematically and deliberately erased, ensuring that only the Eurocentric religious practices remained intact. Montserrat has suffered further, from migration in the 1950s to a brain-drain in the 1980s and more recently the evacuation and displacement of at least 8,000 people due to volcanic eruption of 1995. Yvonne Weekes gives voice to a culture which has slowly been erased and excavates the Montserrat Jumbie Dance through essays and poems.

Dance and American Folk Drama

In the early twentieth century, many American theatre-makers looked to dance and ritual as ways of creating a distinctly American folk drama. They were inspired in part by European experiments in poetic and dance drama, but also by ideas about Native American performance, which they often treated as a source of authentic connection to place. At the same time, Native communities were being restricted in their own ceremonial practices, revealing a deep contradiction at the heart of this search for national theatrical form. Daniel Ibrahim Abdalla explores the diverse ways in which American theatre drew on Indigenous dance as both an artistic model and a cultural fantasy.