Dear Colleagues

We warmly invite you to consider our stream "Dance, Choreography and Organisation" for the 7th Art of Management and Organisation Conference, Copenhagen, 28-31.8.2014 http://www.artofmanagement.org

Deadline for submission of abstracts (500 words): December 5th, 2013

Apologies for cross-posting

Brigitte Biehl-Missal and Claus Springborg

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Dance and human movement are considered a promising research area to explore many body-based dimensions of interaction in organizations, including leadership.

The stream encourages to move and to think around the topic. The stream aims:

·   To further our understanding of how dance, choreography, and various practical designs for developing dance performances can contribute to the analysis and understanding of both organizational processes and organizational research methodology

·      To create deeper reflections of choreographic, embodied practices in organizations and of the kinaesthetic aspects of many organizational processes

·    To explore the transformative potential of dance and embodied interaction with regard to leading and organizing, “leading” and “following”, and structure and improvisation, acknowledging perspectives on gender and diversity.



The body and both choreographed and improvised forms of dance and the process of developing dance performances have attracted increasing attention of scholars in social science. Contemporary choreography thrives beyond the art world in an ever-expanding field of applications, including scholarly and political contexts (Desmond, 1997; Butterworth and Wildschut, 2009). Advances have been made by cultural studies that have pushed the boundaries of the discipline to consider dance as a culturally shaped bodily practice, which expresses and transforms socio-cultural contexts. For example, the influence of movement and bodily expression, not only onstage but in real-life, has been considered by gender studies (Young, 1990), and may be all relevant for organisational life and leadership. Dance and dancers have been used to develop and to communicate new theories within a broad range of academic fields ranging from physics to biology to social science (TED talk with John Bohannon<http://www.ted.com/talks/john_bohannon_dance_vs_powerpoint_a_modest_proposal.html>).



The emergence of the young area of “dance” in organization studies is a logical continuation of these developments. Dance is used as:

·        a metaphor and heuristic device (Chandler, 2012) to make sense of dynamic forms of human interaction in organizations, emphasizing processes of bodily movement, rhythm, themes and variations and non-verbal processes of leading and following

·        artistic research to theorize about organisations, whereby dance is used to generate data and to represent research findings in a more aesthetic way (Leavy, 2009). The body is viewed as an experiential repository for what we “know”, which may emerge through dance.

·        actual arts-based interventions in organisations to work with aesthetic and tacit issues (Barry and Meisiek, 2010), for example in the are of leadership development where processes of “leading” and “following” are performed and bodily negotiated to increase “kinaesthetic empathy” (Foster, 2011) and an understanding of the embodied, relational,  and non-verbal dimensions of leadership.



Empirical and conceptual papers as well as choreographic experiments and performances by dance practitioners are invited for the stream. The following is a list of suggested areas, but other ideas are welcome:



·      Movement and embodied interaction in organizations seen through the lens of dance/choreography

·      Exploring leadership through dance

·      Choreography (as the making of dance and movement in space and time) and implications on the design and use of space in organisations

·      Choreographic practices as designs for organizing improvisation and development of performances

·      Gender and movement in organisation and leadership

·      Dance and choreography as a metaphor for various aspects of organizational reality (e.g. tango, swing, contemporary, classical ballet)

·      Using dance in artistic and bodily research – data collection, data analysis, and communication of results

·      Dance as an arts-based intervention in organizations

·      Contact improvisation

·      Ephemerality of dance and organisation

·      Implications for organizational studies from the field of neuroscience and dance





Abstracts should be mailed to the convenors Brigitte Biehl-Missal [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]> and Claus Springborg [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]> and to the conference organizers [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]>



Literature

Barry, D. and Meisiek, S. (2010) Sensemaking, Mindfulness and the Workarts: Seeing More and Seeing Differently. Organization Studies, 31(11): 1505-1530.

Butterworth, J. & Wildschut, L. (2013) (eds.) Contemporary Choreography. A Critical Reader. London and New York: Routledge.

Chandler, J. (2012) Work as dance. Organization, 19(6): 865–878.

Desmond, J. C. (1997) Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance (Post-Contemporary Interventions). Durham: Duke University Press.

Foster, S. L. (2011) Choreographing Empathy. Kinesthesia in Performance. London and New York: Routledge.

Ladkin D. and Taylor, S. (2009) Understanding Arts-Based Methods in Managerial Development.  Academy of Management Learning & Education, 8(1): 55-69.

Leavy, P. (2009) Dance and Movement. In: Method Meets Art: Arts-based Research Practice, 179-214. New York: Guilford Press.

Lepecki, A. (2006) Exhausting Dance. Performance and the Politics of Movement. New York: Routledge.

Slutskaya, N. and Schreven, S. (2007) Choreographies of Identities. In A. Pullen, N. Beech and D. Sims (eds.) Exploring Identity: Concepts and Methods, 170–184. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Young, I. M. (1990) Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.




Dr Brigitte Biehl-Missal

Essex Business School

University of Essex

Wivenhoe Park

Colchester CO4 3SQ

United Kingdom

T 01206 874590

F 01206 873429

E [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]>

www.essex.ac.uk/ebs<http://www.essex.ac.uk/ebs><http://www.essex.ac.uk/ebs>