What Is Contemporary? Symposium 2025

Call for Session Proposals

“Cultural stories are deeply tied into the kinetic being, and responding to this being through contemporary artistic practices is a way of retrieving, rediscovering, and creating culture.”

— from “Dreaming the River: Contemporary Dance Practice and Creating Cultural Identity” by Michelle Olson |Co-Artistic Director, Raven Spirit Dance

“Let’s be clear that not all contemporary dance is resistance. Some revolves around other goals and concepts. What I am trying to say here is that the genre has great potential power for resistance. And that it has been used by different artists to move away from more conventionalized genres, to find their voice in this style. It has become a field of exploration and controversy. Not because people dance naked on stage, but because they dared to force us to watch it, because they confronted us not with a pleasant narrative but with the hardship that is letting ourselves feel. And what can be more defiant than being vulnerable enough to feel?"

— from “Contemporary Dance as Discourse of Resistance” by Giulia Cristofoli | dramaturg, producer

“The term ‘contemporary’ is a mystification, crafted in Europe, in the West, in a way. In the end it’s always a way of claiming a universal value in dance—either you’re in it or you’re out.”

— nora chipaumire | artist quoted by SanSan Kwan in “When Is Contemporary Dance?”

We invite practitioners, scholars, educators, students, and enthusiasts to submit session proposals for classes/workshops, creative practice, cyphers, improvisation jams, movement sessions, panels, paper presentations, and more to be considered for the What Is Contemporary? Symposium taking place in person October 15-16, 2025 at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago.

Dance technique, a foundational specificity that is able to be repeated, is a form of entrainment - making something part of a flow and carrying it along. It is the source of all codified dances and how all codified dances are created and embodied. Anything that flows or carries forward is naturally susceptible to adaptation, alteration, evolution. Contemporary is the continuously adapting, altering, evolving expression of dance’s codified forms…or is it?

Is contemporary dance more of a how than a what? Is it open and available to more styles, techniques and points of view, to visual, aural, aesthetic conflation? Does contemporary dance enable greater self-expression? Is it about coloring outside the lines, openness to play and experiment, freedom to reinvent? Is it about being relevant in the moment and the movement? Is it more inclusive or exclusive?

Contemporary means distinctly different things in different dance contexts from concert to community, club to cultural, competition to commercial. For the 2025 Symposium, Co-Curators and Columbia College Chicago Dance faculty Keesha Beckford and Dardi McGinley Gallivan invite session proposals from all parts of the ecosystem to discover and uncover together what is contemporary in dance.

Dates and Deadlines

• June 16, 2025 — Call for Sessions announced

• August 8, 2025— Submissions due (grace period through August 12, 2025)

• August 22, 2025 — Notification of acceptance

• October 16, 2025 — Day of Symposium Sessions

Questions to Consider

If you need guidance developing a session topic, we encourage you to consider the following questions from your experience in club, commercial, community, competition, concert, cultural, diasporic, folkloric, improvisation, indigenous, studio and/or other forms:

• Does contemporary dance need to understand/connect to/relate back to traditional or historic dance forms? Do you have to have deep knowledge of a technique to know when it diverges?

• Does embodying lesser known/unknown/no longer well-known dance languages in the present moment make those movement forms contemporary?

• Is it all about context? Can the same movement or phrasework be both contemporary and traditional?

• Can contemporary movement be codified and still be contemporary?

• What are contemporary approaches to dancemaking?

• Does contemporary dance have to speak to the current time?

• What are contemporary ways to approach pedagogy in every dance form?

• Where does the aggressive urge to define or defend “what is contemporary” stem from? How does it relate to embracing pluralism in dance?

• What is gained by and who gains from a singular or universally accepted definition for contemporary dance? What is lost and who loses?

• Is contemporary synonymous with innovative or radical? Should it be?

Topics to Consider

• Traditional forms and contemporary practices

• Style vs. Technique

• Validity

• Marketability

• Relevance

• Making dance now

• Teaching dance now

• Other...

The Symposium is organized by Keesha Beckford, Dardi McGinley Gallivan, Roell Schmidt and Meredith Sutton. Dance Center faculty, staff and students will make up the program committee.

A $150 honorarium will be provided for each accepted session.

Submission

• Submission due date: August 8, 2025 (grace period through August 12, 2025)

• Notification of acceptance by August 22, 2025

• Submit proposals via submission portal:

Requirements

• Name, affiliation if any, and email address

• Title

• Proposal/abstract (250-500 words)

• Answer: What makes my dance practice contemporary? (200 words or less)

• Technical needs (if any)

• Brief bio (150 words)

• Photo (full color – headshot or action shot)

• CV, resume, and/or link to online work samples

• All materials must be submitted in English.

Additional Details

• Symposium sessions will take place from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 16, 2025 at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, 1306 S Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605.

• Each session will include both physical and verbal explorations and inquiries along with a minimum of 15 minutes for synthesis and reflection.

• The program committee will pair complementary proposals into a shared session. Each selected proposal will receive an honorarium.

• Radical formats are welcome.

• The main language of the conference will be English.

Contact

Please contact the Dance Presenting Series Directors with any questions: Artistic Director Meredith Sutton (msutton@colum.edu) and Producing Director Roell Schmidt (roschmidt@colum.edu).

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago

Embedded in the School of Theatre and Dance, the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago values embodied human expression and nurtures an expansive understanding of dance from the established to the experimental. Centering pluralism, the Dance Center aims to be a nucleus for innovation and creativity—on stage, in the classroom, and beyond.

By partnering with local, national, and international dance artists dedicated to transforming the field, the Dance Center offers live performances and other shared opportunities for students, faculty, artists, and audiences to connect, witness, research, experiment, practice, imagine, and grow.

We cultivate an environment and culture that prioritizes respect for self and others, and advances an anti-racist, equitable, and just society.