Social Dance Research – Festie Style! – Erinn Liebhard: Dance Artist

Social dance is a huge inspiration for me as an artist. Be it the movement itself, the atmosphere or the unique ways people connect to each other, I always find new inspirations or reinvigorations from going out dancing socially. In fact, I consider it one of the most important facets of my creative research. One of my favorite ways to conduct it is to attend and participate in electronic dance music festivals, so I am excited to be headed to the SubOctave Festival in Houston, MN this weekend!

These festivals are such unique communities, from the way they pop up just as liminally as they disappear to the ease and openness of the ways people connect with friends and strangers alike at such events. They have become such a phenomenon that academic articles, theses and whole books have been written on the subject. My personal experiences and literature reviews alike have revealed dance to be an important method for human connection at these events, which I find fascinating and inspiring. Beyond that, I am an EDM fan myself.

I find this genre of music to often be incredibly flexible to adopting many influences, rhythmically, harmonically and structurally complicated, and above all, GROOVY. In fact, I feel it has become a really interesting contemporary home for jazz and funk sensibilities! The expectation of a heavy pulse holds everything together while an often solo artist creates his take on vibe for whole communities to dance out their own. This gets at my interest in individual interpretation of a groove amongst a community sharing the vocabulary of a vibe (or a choreography, or whatever the material may be): dancing to this music is a physical manifestation of the beautiful concept of the simultaneity of difference and similarity. It’s an allegory for what contemporary society needs.

Being able to vibe with each other, TOGETHER, while doing so in our own ways.

So while I DO get to go be a silly hippy in the name of research (and sling beverages for my friend’s coffee truck while I’m at it!), I DO see it as such. Research, concerning how we can better connect with one another through movement! Below are some upcomings related to my research: come let movement connect you!:

July 31 – August 3
Attending and Presenting at:
National Dance Education Organization’s
“Jazz Dance: Roots and Branches In Practice” Conference
Newport, RI