Rhythms of Social Change
Time, Rhythm & Pace in Performance
Project Lead: Professor Farzaneh Hemmasi, Faculty of Music
Idle No More’s hand drums and round dance at the intersection of Yonge and Dundas. Articulating the rhythms of modernity in Chinese revolutionary theater. Prohibiting “stimulating [percussion] rhythms” following the Islamic Republic of Iran’s establishment. These diverse examples suggest a range of provocative questions: Why is performance so often tasked with evincing rupture with the past and creating a new era? How do artists and the arts perform and even advance the pace of social change? And how are the rhythmic-temporal aspects of music, dance, and theatre implicated in political communication?
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These and other questions will be addressed in the symposium and performance Rhythms of Social Change: Time, Rhythm, and Pace in Performance,
which will explore the performance of rhythm, time, and pace in social movements, revolutions and postrevolutionary arts. This interdisciplinary event comprises a half-day symposium of presentations by faculty from across the University of Toronto. Symposium participants will investigate a variety of performance forms from diverse geographical locations and historical periods. Presentations will emphasize audio-visual examples to ground scholarly discourse in artistic practice.
Rhythms of Social Change ends with a performance by the Toronto-based trio Persamenco, an innovative instrumental ensemble fusing Iranian art music and flamenco.
Both the Rhythms of Social Change symposium and the Persamenco concert are free and open to the public. Reservations are not required.
For further information, please contact Event Administrator Jardena Gertler-Jaffe at j.gertler.jaffe@mail.utoronto.ca
Event co-sponsors:
University of Toronto Faculty of Music
Department of East Asian Studies
Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies
To request an accommodation for disability, please contact Kim Yates at the Jackman Humanities Institute at jhi.associate@utoronto.ca or (416) 946-0313 by January 2 2017. Web: https://www.humanities.utoronto.ca/event_details/id=2557