SHHRC Insight Development Grant
Professor VK Preston was recently awarded a SHHRC Insight Development Grant for her project, New Directions in Seventeenth-Century Performance Research: Intangible Baroques. VK’s project reveals an alternative history to 17th century dance and theatre, challenging the dominant narratives of its early modern performance history.
The heart of her research is a new manuscript that draws attention to silences and lacunae, attending to regions (the Arctic and Greenland, Ontario, newfoundland, the Andes) practices (the smoking of petun — tobacco — on stage) and performances (non-binary dancers, resistance, protest, satire) that help scholars re-think this period. Her project also asks how practices circulate transnationally in the baroque and analyzes archives not previously studied in this field.
Insight Development Grants enable the development of new research questions, as well as experimentation with new methods, theoretical approaches and/or ideas.
Gertrude Lippincott Award (2018)
VK Preston received the esteemed 2018 Gertrude Lippincott Award from the Dance Studies Association (DSA) for her essay, “Baroque Relations: Performing Silver and Gold in Daniel Rabel’s Ballet of the Americas.” This award recognizes the best English-language dance studies article published in the last year, recognizing excellence in the field of dance scholarship.
The DSA Selection Committee had the following to say about VK’s essay: “Based on its imaginative and original contribution, its excellent synthesis of theoretical and empirical dimensions, including the rigour of its argumentation, and also its impact on the field, we award the Gertrude Lippincott Prize to VK Preston.” To learn more about the award, visit the Dance Studies Association.
Exploring baroque performance and histories of racialization, this paper on ballet and colonization examines travel writing alongside early modern dance records. Addressing masks, matter, and the metaphorical blackening and whitening of alchemy, VK inflects this study of performance’s remains with analyses of race and religious difference evidenced in ballet’s records, traversing histories of the expulsion of minority populations, gender fluidity, and baroque performance.
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Medieval and Early Modern Dance in the Book
Friday, April 5, 2019
Organized by Lia Markey, Newberry Library; Shawn Keener, A-R Editions; and Alison Calhoun, Indiana University
CENTER FOR RENAISSANCE STUDIES PROGRAMS
In connection with a Newberry exhibition devoted to its renowned dance collection, the Center will host a symposium focused on early modern dance and music in the book. The event will include lectures, a session with rare books, a demonstration of Baroque dance, and a performance by the Newberry Consort.
Participants: Alison Calhoun, Indiana University; Elissa Oh, Howard University; Seth Stewart Williams, Barnard College; VK Preston, University of Toronto; Shawn Keener, A-R Editions; Melinda Sullivan, Boston University.