Arts Spotlight: Performing Arts Series

This year’s Clifford Symposium “The ‘Good’ Body” will take place Thursday, Sept. 24 - Saturday, Sept. 26. Bodies are like opinions; everyone has one. Unfortunately, the conversation doesn’t stop there. Countless pressures strive to dictate body image and create spaces that alienate comfort and security in an increasingly image-obsessed society. What is a “good” body? Do you have one? Do I? What is the nature of such standards? As technological, medical and social factors continue to shape our concepts of worthiness, beauty, health and bodily function, we have to examine how broader contexts matter — how cultural forces, systems of power, privilege, time and place contribute to our definition of “good.”

This year’s Clifford Symposium does just that by inspecting the beliefs and politics surrounding the human body — their origins, influence and place in society. The Symposium will feature over thirty separate events, including a gallery talk, film screenings, lectures, movement and writing workshops and performances covering a wide range of art and non-art disciplines.

Our annual Nicholas R. Clifford Symposium kicks off each academic year by giving the campus community rich opportunities to discuss and experience timely topics from many perspectives. According to Cristal Brown, Assistant Professor of Dance and one of the head organizers, this year’s symposium was inspired by recent events of racially charged violence, as well as this year’s 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Even more recent events have reminded us of the importance of this issue, as presidential candidates begin to take the stage and discuss topics that will have a very real effect on how our bodies experience the world and how the world experiences our bodies.

Disabled artist and keynote speaker Barak adé Soleil will take the spotlight on Thursday with a lecture entitled “The ‘good’ Body: An Unfinished Legacy.” Soleil has been working within the live arts scene nationally and internationally for the past two decades and is the founder of D UNDERBELLY, an interdisciplinary network of artists of color. His directing and performing endeavors speak to the expanse of contemporary art and use body-based techniques drawn from the African diaspora, postmodern traditions and conceptual social forms.

A pedagogy workshop will precede Soleil’s keynote address. A reception, followed by a screening of Phoenix Dance, will take place later in the day.

Friday will feature talks by several speakers and workshops in the afternoon. Writer and poet Eli Clare, author of Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, will begin the day with her lecture “Defective, Deficient, and Burdensome: Thinking About Bad Bodies.” Choreographer and performance artist Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Assistant Professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, will later offer a performance, screening and lecture titled “#BodyAsPlaceForAction.”

Saturday will feature presentations by Middlebury students and faculty and culminate in Soleil’s keynote performance. For a full schedule of events, visit the symposium’s website, go/clifford/. All events are free and open to the public and will be scattered through the MCA, McCullough and Twilight.