Kate Mattingly

School of Dance

Amount Awarded: $9,682.00

Awarded for 2019-20

Title: Dancing around Race: Whiteness in Higher Education

Seeking funds to host a symposium that examines whiteness in higher education, and “regenerative refusals,” a concept developed by Dr. Maile Arvin. Scheduled for January 2020, this four-day symposium will focus on two priorities: teaching methods that draw from Dance, Ethnic, and Legal Studies and healing practices for faculty and students. The goals of the symposium are to develop pedagogical tools to discuss systemic exclusions and to offer sustainable self-care for faculty and students.

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I am very grateful for the support of the Dee Grant, which made it possible to host a four-day symposium that examined whiteness in higher education, and “regenerative refusals,” a concept developed by Dr. Maile Arvin. The events took place in January 2020, and focused on two priorities: teaching methods that draw from Dance, Ethnic, and Legal Studies and healing practices for faculty and students. Based on feedback from students and faculty, as well as plans for future events, I can state confidently that the project met our goals of developing pedagogical tools to discuss systemic exclusions and offering sustainable self-care for faculty and students.

Asked to describe the feeling of the events and the work we undertook, participants responded, “reflective,” “invested,” and “honest.” This doesn’t mean that every moment was easy or comfortable, but rather that the people who gathered knew that equity work depends on a certain degree of discomfort in order to address the obstacles and barriers that are intrinsic to whiteness. Even now, three months after the events, I continue to receive messages from students, colleagues, and attendees who describe the conversations and practices as “powerful” and “impactful.”

In the list of articles and links about the events, I include a recording of a panel for faculty and students that took place in the Marriott Center for Dance and that drew attendees from the Modern Dance and Ballet programs, as well as Ethnic Studies faculty and community members. Similarly, a panel that took place with colleagues in the History Department, Ethnic Studies, and Gender Studies (Dr. Maile Arvin and Dr. Charles Sepulveda) attracted a packed room of students and scholars, including Dr. Edmund Fong and Dr. Kathryn Stockton. I see their attendance as evidence of the importance of bringing together scholars from across our campus to create interdisciplinary conversations about teaching practices. More specifically, I view these events as ways of highlighting alignments in research by scholars in dance and other disciplines, and by offering the first of what I hope will be ongoing collaborations between these departments and the School of Dance.

Another significant impact of the project is its contribution to the importance of thinking about all of our curricula as antiracist, not just certain classes. One of the guest scholar/artists, Dr. Rebecca Chaleff, taught a terrific ballet class on January 16, 2020 that reckoned with the social and aesthetic aspects of ballet that are historically bound to whiteness. Rebecca’s teaching emphasizes the biomechanical elements of technique that leave space for all bodies to interpret the form differently. In response to her teaching, students said “Wow, there’s a refreshing lack of judgment in your ballet class!” Others appreciated the questions Rebecca posed like, “How do we access what is helpful and how does this feel? Where am I supported? Where do my muscles relax? Where do they tense unnecessarily? If we dictate where we are going, this creates a lot tension...”

As part of the planning for events in January 2020, an invitation to attend a weekend of Dancing Around Race events was distributed in August and September 2019 through the School of Dance announcements, the College of Fine Arts marketing department, and national organizations: the Dance Studies Association and the National Dance Education Organization. Sixty people applied to be part of the weekend immersion and a discounted rate was secured at the University Guest House. By bringing together educators and artists from around the country to join the conversations with our faculty and students, we were able to create a rich, multilayered, and generative experience for everyone. In order to set up a conducive environment for this equity work, I sent readings and group agreements in advance of the weekend in order to offer some common language around whiteness and decolonization, as well as the ways we wanted to interact with one another.

Some of the feedback we heard from the weekend included:

  • “I am grateful for your including movement practices: this is rare and so powerful”
  • “I am so appreciative of the It did not feel rushed. It didn’t feel like we had to end as soon as things got juicy, as is so often the case”
  • “I appreciated the surprising usefulness of speaking about equity in a white-folks-only small group”
  • “Absolutely incredible that this was pulled off with a Dee Grant of less than $10,000, the most efficient use of grant dollars of all ”
  • “This weekend allowed for the discussion to deepen beyond a conference panel and gave voice to people across the nation to express their individual experiences. The collective knowledge and wisdom accumulated from diverse voices was ”

One attendee responded, “I came to this conference to connect with a group of like-minded colleagues who believe in our higher education system’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Professor Mattingly and the colleagues she assembled to facilitate this conference provided a remarkable and needed seminar of substantial scale and size where dance educators in higher education could discuss decentering whiteness in depth.”

Another attendee, Natalie Desch, who is also a new faculty member in the School, encapsulated our goals perfectly when she said that “Time is an indicator of investment or priority, and equity work depends on dedicated time and energy… For me the greatest impact was the awareness that was sparked for many people, and our responsibility of doing more…. There’s nothing but more that can done.”

An indicator of the success and impact of the project can be seen in the tangible outcomes, like a list of resources with more the 65 items that enrich teaching practices for faculty and create a tool kit for equity work. Other indicators of success are the future events that are now being organized: I just collaborated with colleagues in Ethnic Studies and UtahPresents on a University Teaching Grant that would bring Rulan Tangen to campus in the fall of 2020 to continue the conversations about decolonizing curricula that were started with Dancing Around Race. As a member of the Senate Advisory Committee on Diversity, I often find myself referring to the best practices and interventions that were generated during Dancing Around Race to address systemic exclusions and obstacles to equity.

In collaboration with colleagues who planned the symposium with me, I submitted a proposal to the Dance Studies Association (DSA) annual conference that takes place in Vancouver in October 2020 where we hope we can share and discuss Dancing Around Race using a long table setting, similar to those we created in January at the University of Utah. We look forward to discussing the benefits of the project and the unexpected moments that reiterated how this work acts as a mode of resistance in which all dance scholars, administrators, and practitioners may engage. We will invite thoughts and feedback from participants in the immersion as well as DSA members who may offer advice for continuing this work.

People who attended the weekend immersion, Liz Ivkovich of UtahPreesnts and Jo Blake of Weber State, sent a proposal to DSA that was inspired by Dancing Around Race events, and calls for dance curators to decolonize their practices. Following Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s recommendations in Decolonizing Methodologies, their session would take a critical look at practices of dance presentation. More specifically, they seek to address and challenge the ways that economic and cultural imperialisms influence which artists are selected and how they are engaged by presenting organizations. They asked me to moderate this session at the conference.

Links to articles and recording inspired by Dancing Around Race: Whiteness in Higher Education:

Special thanks, again, to the Dee Grant committee and to Sean Carter and Glenda Staples in the School of Dance who handled the invoices and receipts, and took care of many payments, with incredible grace and competence.