Sarahleigh Castelyn
Dr Sarahleigh Castelyn is a performer, choreographer, and researcher: a dance nerd. She is an Associate Professor/ Reader in Performing Arts in the School of Arts and Creative Industries at the University of East London (U.K.) and is Research Degree Leader for the School too. Her dance research focuses on race, gender, sexuality, and nation in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, the politics of hybridity, and the use of practice as a research methodology. She has performed in and choreographed dance works, for example at JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Festival (SA) and Queen Mary (UK) She serves on several editorial and organisation boards, such as Research in Dance Education and HOTFOOT. She has published on dance and South Africa, for instance in Viral Dramaturgies (2018) and Narratives in Black British Dance (2018), and in journals such as The African Performance Review, Dance Theatre Journal, Animated, African Performance Review, and The South African Theatre Journal. Her latest book Contemporary Dance in South Africa: The Toyi-Toying Body published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2022) uses both practice research and critical study to explore how contemporary dance in South Africa is an activist artform.
If you are interested in doing a PhD project in these areas of research, please do email: [email protected]
Phone: 02082232644
Address: University Of East London
1 Salway Place
London
E15 1NF
If you are interested in doing a PhD project in these areas of research, please do email: [email protected]
Phone: 02082232644
Address: University Of East London
1 Salway Place
London
E15 1NF
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Books by Sarahleigh Castelyn
Using both critical study of these works and the author’s own practice research, the book develops an understanding of the body in contemporary dance and its political and social meanings both in the chosen performance and within the broader context of South African society from 2003-2007. This provides a snapshot of the practice and concerns of contemporary dance in just over a decade from the first democratic national elections in 1994. It is through the study of these dance works that this moment in South African history is captured. Contemporary dance in South Africa tells the story of South Africa; its past, present, and possible future, and is therefore an enticing and evocative historical period to research a dance practice.
In Development by Sarahleigh Castelyn
Book Chapters and Articles by Sarahleigh Castelyn
Conference Presentations by Sarahleigh Castelyn
Recent campaigns have raised awareness of hidden disabilities and the importance of mental health care is stressed in the popular media, however disabilities such as Bipolar and Schizophrenia are still side-lined. There is very little recognition and understanding of the complexities of these disabilities. There are a few choreographers and/or dancers who live/lived with Bipolar, for example Alvin Ailey, and/or have created work about Bipolar, for example Welcome to Barrio Ataxia (2020) by Omar Román De Jesús, and there are Bipolar ambassadors, such as Emma Belle describing living with this disability as a dance. There is a ‘long and complicated relationship between madness and performance (Harpin and Foster, 2014: 4), and although recent productions of Giselle do approach the hetero-normative narrative and disrupt it with decolonial and feminist choreographic tactics, further ‘bodily analysis’ (Desmond, 1997: 33) in which the ‘ways of holding the body, gesturing, moving in relation to time, and using space (taking a lot, using a little, moving with large sweeping motions, or small contained ones, and so forth)’ (Desmond, 1997: 33) reveals how madness is perceived. In talking about Giselle, I must ask, what if Giselle is me?
Using both critical study of these works and the author’s own practice research, the book develops an understanding of the body in contemporary dance and its political and social meanings both in the chosen performance and within the broader context of South African society from 2003-2007. This provides a snapshot of the practice and concerns of contemporary dance in just over a decade from the first democratic national elections in 1994. It is through the study of these dance works that this moment in South African history is captured. Contemporary dance in South Africa tells the story of South Africa; its past, present, and possible future, and is therefore an enticing and evocative historical period to research a dance practice.
Recent campaigns have raised awareness of hidden disabilities and the importance of mental health care is stressed in the popular media, however disabilities such as Bipolar and Schizophrenia are still side-lined. There is very little recognition and understanding of the complexities of these disabilities. There are a few choreographers and/or dancers who live/lived with Bipolar, for example Alvin Ailey, and/or have created work about Bipolar, for example Welcome to Barrio Ataxia (2020) by Omar Román De Jesús, and there are Bipolar ambassadors, such as Emma Belle describing living with this disability as a dance. There is a ‘long and complicated relationship between madness and performance (Harpin and Foster, 2014: 4), and although recent productions of Giselle do approach the hetero-normative narrative and disrupt it with decolonial and feminist choreographic tactics, further ‘bodily analysis’ (Desmond, 1997: 33) in which the ‘ways of holding the body, gesturing, moving in relation to time, and using space (taking a lot, using a little, moving with large sweeping motions, or small contained ones, and so forth)’ (Desmond, 1997: 33) reveals how madness is perceived. In talking about Giselle, I must ask, what if Giselle is me?