Are you a dancer? Have you ever wondered how to talk about your work? Or how you could describe what you do in the studio? Are you eager to draw connections between dance and your other academic experience? What historical, cultural, political and social contexts is your dance informed by? If the dance landscape was a map of sorts, where would you locate yourself and what and whom are you connected to? Do you want to write about dance, for yourself or for the world? On social media, for a newsletter, or for a print or online publication? Are you getting into dance teaching? How do you communicate what you’ve learned to your students in ways that acknowledge the times they live in? Are you someone who enjoys watching dance? And you want to dig deeper, but don’t know where to begin? Read+Write Dance, a 60 hour course conducted over three months, will offer you the tools you need to deepen your understanding of dance. This is not just a dance criticism course. It is as fundamental as the title suggests - you’re going to be reading and writing dance - critically unpacking how you see or watch dance, and thus, how you interpret it.

The course, designed and facilitated by Ranjana Dave, will address both larger historical and critical trajectories that frame dance, and the tools of the trade - the practical and day-to-day implementations of this knowledge - like talking about your own work or writing performance synopses, framing grant proposals and research projects, designing research projects, writing for the public - on social media platforms/print and online publications, and teaching students in different contexts - in dance class, in schools and universities, and more.

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR

Ranjana Dave is an independent dance practitioner and writer. Her work in performance spans practice, writing, curation, research and pedagogy. She trained in Odissi and is a certified yoga teacher. Her artistic practice, emerging from her movement training and her research and writing, unfolds at the intersection of text and movement. Her writing has appeared in The Hindu, Firstpost, Scroll, Time Out, Asian Age, Indian Express, Marg Magazine, NCPA Onstage and Tanz, among other publications.

Ranjana is an experienced facilitator and teacher. She has taught on the MA Performance Practice (Dance) programme at Ambedkar University and also teaches performance theory and practice courses at Ashoka University. She is the editor of the forthcoming volume (2021) Improvised Futures: Encountering the Body in Performance, the second in a six-part book series on India since the 1990s, published by Tulika Books.