Brenda Dixon Gottschild is the author of Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts; Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era (winner of the 2001 Congress on Research in Dance Award for Outstanding Scholarly Dance Publication); The Black Dancing Body–A Geography from Coon to Cool (winner, 2004 de la Torre Bueno prize for scholarly excellence in dance publication); and Joan Myers Brown and The Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina-A Biohistory of American Performance.
Additional honors include the Congress on Research in Dance Award for Outstanding Leadership in Dance Research (2008); a Leeway Foundation Transformation Grant (2009); the International Association for Blacks in Dance Outstanding Scholar Award (2013); the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus Civil Rights Award (2016); and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2017).
A self-described anti-racist cultural worker utilizing dance as her medium, she is a freelance writer, consultant, performer, and lecturer; a former consultant and writer for Dance Magazine; and Professor Emerita of dance studies, Temple University. As an artist-scholar she coined the phrase, “choreography for the page,” to describe her embodied, subjunctive approach to research writing.
Nationwide and abroad she curates post-performance reflexive dialogues, writes critical performance essays, performs self-created solos, and collaborates with her husband, choreographer/dancer Hellmut Gottschild, in a genre they developed and titled “movement theater discourse.
Our guest's decades of experience are shared with Adenike and Natasha in an intimate conversation about the creative process, and the way racism pulls at the time and energy of Black people, particularly women/femmes. We also discuss embodiment, self-concept and more! Our collaboration culminates in a visceral vocal improvisation that we can't wait for y'all to hear! Check the BCH Study Room link in our bio for more on Brenda, with easy access to additional links from previous episodes!
Link to transcript: https://share.descript.com/view/nAYy4p0MJOk
Links to content discussed in this episode:
Brenda’s website (where you can find information to purchase her books, and more!): https://bdixongottschild.com
Yvonne Daniels: Embodied Knowledge (Book): https://books.google.com/books/about/Dancing_Wisdom.html?id=nhCRJ4u_CYIC
Frank Wilderson - Afropessimism (Book and Theoretical framework): https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631496141
Afro-futurism (Theoretical framework): https://newsroom.ucla.edu/magazine/afrofuturism
Somatic Self-Portrait Exercise: TikTok created by Natasha to demonstrate: https://www.tiktok.com/@blackcreativehealing/video/6937759473989717253
