Speakers Bureau Speaker
Adair Landborn, Tucson
Adair Landborn is a performer, educator, choreographer, and scholar specializing in Spanish flamenco and American modern dance. A certified movement analyst, she holds advanced degrees in dance, including an interdisciplinary doctorate in the anthropology of dance and somatic studies. Her lecture demonstrations illuminate how elements of human culture are embodied through dance.
Dance, Sensuality, and Culture
Beneath every human culture, there exists an underpinning of unconscious cultural knowledge and sensual experience that emerges through its dances. The sensual living experiences, the values celebrated within a culture, and the communal and personal needs unique to each culture find expression through the reiteration of rhythmic movement patterns known as ‘dance.’ The qualities most intrinsic to a world dance form are often taken for granted by the people of that culture; some performers may never verbally articulate the values that motivate their movements. Dance scholars agree: dance is not a universal language. Rather, like language, dance is a human universal and many relationships exist between its variant forms. This presentation attempts to decode the human significance of world dance form, and explores cultures through cross-cultural dance experiences.
• Host organization provides a VHS video player.
Flamenco Dance and Spanish Bullfighting: A Confluence of Movement Traditions?
The cultural practices of flamenco dance and Spanish bullfighting are key identifiers of Spanish culture, which spread its influence to many parts of the world. Spanish bullfighting is formal and associated with Spanish male identity, power, and life values. Flamenco dance, however, is informal and associated with Spanish female identity, power, and life values. Despite their contrasts, anthropological analysis reveals that these two cultural practices also share a surprising number of attributes. A dancer’s reputation and a bullfighter’s very life depend upon the performer’s technical prowess, while a performer’s ability to draw empathy and self-identification from their audiences is critical to the artistic success of any bullfight or flamenco dance performance. This presentation explores these two fascinating cultural practices and how they share humanistic values that express a uniquely Spanish poetry of motion.
• Host organization provides a stage or wooden surface and a VHS video player.
Why So Much Passion? A Cultural Guide to the Mysteries of Flamenco Dance
Appreciation of a flamenco dance performance increases as audience members learn more about the cultural context and aesthetics for the performing artists themselves. The flamenco dance form celebrates human qualities of courage and passion, and it challenges human capacities for speed and strength. As a flamenco dance performer and scholar, Landborn decodes the cultural and artistic attributes of flamenco dance through discussion and demonstration. Explore the flamenco dance form through the Spanish cultural context from which flamenco dance emerges, and the unique set of aesthetic standards that govern its performance.
• Host organization provides a stage or wooden surface and a VHS video or CD player.
