Conferences
Conferences serve as essential hubs for scholars and practitioners to share new work and ideas, and form creative and professional connections in the field. DSA presents large Annual Conferences oriented around a general theme, as well as smaller Special Topics Conferences that delve into a more limited area of focus.
Jennifer Harge, plenary presentation at Dancing in Common (2019)
The Annual Conference is the principal international meeting point for all members of the Dance Studies Association. The conference program usually comprises some seventy sessions, presented over
The Special Topics conferences are smaller, shorter gatherings around a specific issue, theme, or area of interest within dance scholarship. They do not follow an annual schedule, but
Recipients of DSA awards receive complimentary conference attendance.
Annual Conference
Digital DSA emerged from the cancellation of our 2020 annual in-person gathering, a cancellation forced by the global pandemic. As we maintain community while distancing, DSA will program virtual gatherings throughout the fall of 2020 free to our membership. While these events can’t hope to replace or replicate the totality of in-person conference weekend, Digital DSA will hold the field to account for anti-racist systemic change and other seismic global shifts.
The DSA 2021 Program Committee is collectively imagining this conference as a vessel to build, explore, collaborate, perform, and agitate a discourse in dance studies that speaks to our current global crises, especially in terms of anti-black racism, apparatuses of supremacy, technologies of connection, and individual/collective health, well-being, and care.
At this conference in Vancouver, the first DSA gathering in Canada and postponed from 2020, presenters will explore dance and activism in localized and transcultural settings, and share strategies for productive change on the stage, street, screen and within the academy.
future conferences
Dance Studies Association welcomes proposals for future conferences. For further information on how to suggest a conference or to volunteer in the organization of DSA conferences, please see our guidelines and contact the Vice President for Conferences.
past conferences
Dance Studies Association continues the tradition of Congress on Research in Dance and Society of Dance History Scholars. Peruse our past conferences below. For our published Conference Proceedings, see our Conference Proceedings.