Dance’s embodiment of cultural heritage enriches a wide range of other humanistic study. That same embodiment, however, also presents challenges for its preservation and study. The increasing ease and availability of film, video, and digital technologies have created opportunities for dance to expand beyond its traditional body-to-body transmission. But, access to dance information, especially recordings, has historically been limited and inequitable, both in terms of whose work is represented in archival collections and who has the privilege to view that work; a situation thrown into stark relief during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the performing arts community was forced to pivot toward screens overnight. The author, a researcher for the Dancing Digital/No Boundaries Archive Project (DD/NBAP), has been working since before the pandemic to create more accessible, equitable, interconnected, and sustainable dance resources online. They will discuss the project’s multiple strategies to represent the voices currently excluded from the archive - especially those of women and BIPOC dance artists - including the creation of a Dancing Digital Commons (DDC), built upon the existing Wikidata integration model and envisioned as a curated locus of linked dance data from contributing institutions and individuals. The author will share the project’s early demo for the DDC, which is centered upon information about ten contemporary African American choreographers, and integrates data from established performing arts archives. They will also discuss how the DDC might function as a model for data justice and enrichment across the arts and humanities.

Authors:
Rebecca Salzer, University of Alabama, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Rebecca Salzer is Associate Professor of Dance at the University of Alabama and director of the Dancing Digital project, which works toward creating and facilitating more accessible, equitable, interconnected, and sustainable dance resources online.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

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