Lives Outside the Lines: a Symposium in Honour of Marlene Kadar

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The International Auto/Biography Association – Chapter of the Americas Conference: May 15-17, 2017 – Lives Outside the Lines: a Symposium in Honour of Marlene Kadar. This conference was held at the Centre for Feminist Research, York University, Toronto. Convened by: Eva C. Karpinski, York U. and Ricia Anne Chansky, U. of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. Conference Manager: Julia Pyryeskina.

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Presentations related to Kadar's scholarship by Helen Buss, Jeanne Perreault, Elizabeth podnieks, Julie Rak, Sidonie Smith, Patrick D.M. Taylor, & Linda Warley, among others. Featuring presentations by leading global scholars on autobiography studies in the Americas, including: Black Atlantic Lives, Disability Studies, Embodiment, Feminist Theories, Graphic Lives, Illness Narratives, Lives on Screen, Masculinity Studies, Migration & Translation, Queer & Trans Lives, teaching Lives, Testimony & Witnessing, & Trauma Studies, & more. Also featuring the exhibition "outside the lines" at the Eleanor Winters Art Gallery, as well as poster presentations, digital presentations, & book exhibitions.

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Browsing Lives Outside the Lines: a Symposium in Honour of Marlene Kadar by Subject "Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation"

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    Passing Out: How Space Functions in the Politics and Performance of Masculinity On and Offstage
    (2017-05-15) Broomfield, Mark
    Perhaps no artistic form unsettles American masculinity more than the Western theatrical dance tradition. Men who pursue professional dance careers quickly learn that their chosen occupation not only carries the stigma of homosexuality and effeminacy, but that it also reduces their masculine status. This reduction in status, whether perceived or real, carries unique compensatory strategies by those within the profession to assuage a consuming public. Strategies to this effect often depict the male dancing body conventionally, in which traditional signifiers of (heterosexual) masculinity are emphasized, praised, and rewarded. Indeed, straying from this script risks suspicion and rejection not only within the presumed queer space of dance, but it also reveals the narrow definitions of gender performance allowed for male dancers. Gender norms and the policing of the male dancing body expose a fundamental contradiction in American concert dance: its embrace and simultaneous rejection of gay men that “fail” to look or act “straight.” Unlike their heterosexual counterparts, gay male dancers routinely face discriminatory practices that underscore their oppressed status in contemporary dance. To this end, my presentation examines the institutional practices of the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation (AADF) that account for the production of an internationally recognized branding of the black male dancing body. Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the AADF during the summers of 2005, 2006, 2008, I expose the politics between on and offstage performances of masculinity in two sites—the studio and the Ailey Gala. Within this framework, I highlight how space becomes an important marker for the legitimatized and legible body, and how the embodied resistances of the queer male dancing body disrupts those boundaries.
This conference was made possible with support from a/b Auto/Biography Studies, a SSHRC Connection Grant and York University: Office of the Vice President Academic & Provost; Office of the Vice President Research and Innovation; the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies; the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies Canada @ 150 Fund; the Faculty of Graduate Studies; the Graduate Program in Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies; the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies; the Department of Humanities, Critical Disability Studies, and the Centre for Feminist Research. Logo design © Martha Newbigging.

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