Senior Lecturer

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Research Areas

• Histories of popular dance practices
  
• Cultural memory
  
• Relationships between visual technologies (e.g. photography, film, digital media) and the body in modernity and postmodernity

My research is broadly concerned with the historical and cultural construction of dancing bodies during modernity and postmodernity. I have a particular interest in popular dance practices (on the street, stage or screen), whose low-art status and supposed triviality often disguise the workings of highly complex historical and cultural processes. My work focuses on the vehicles that carry popular dance practices through history and across geographical space, such as memory and the visual technologies of photography, film and digital media.

This research is interdisciplinary and mediates between dance studies, film studies, cultural history and memory studies.

Current Research

My current research investigates the role of cultural memory in popular digital media that capture the dancing body, such as YouTube and the film Moulin Rouge! (2001).

I am also collaborating with colleagues from Roehampton University on a PhD study guide.

I am an active member of the Popular Dance and Music Matters research group, based at the University of Surrey.

Past Research

My doctoral research (Capturing the Cancan: Body Politics from the Enlightenment to Postmodernity) focused on particular moments in the history of the cancan: its emergence in 1830s working class dance halls; its revival in the Moulin Rouge of the 1890s; chorus lines on film and stage in the 1920s; American and French cancan films of the 1950s; and Baz Luhrmann’s film Moulin Rouge! (2001). Three strands of the argument that emerged are:

• The predominance of Enlightenment notions of the rational and irrational in descriptions and depictions of the cancan throughout its history.
  
• The cancan’s continuous reworking of and reference back to its past incarnations
  
• The use of modern and postmodern technologies (such as the glass lens, the film camera and digital imaging technologies) both to contain, and voyeuristically capture, the often disturbing but fascinating revelation of female legs

This research was funded by a Graduate Assistantship from Roehampton University.
You can read my thesis at: http://roehampton.openrepository.com

Postgraduate Research Supervision

I am interested in supervising doctoral research, particularly in the following areas:

• Popular dance practices (historical or contemporary; on street, stage or screen)
  
• Cultural memory and the body
  
• The history of relationships between visual technologies and the body
  
• Dance and cultural identities (e.g. gender, race, class, nationality, etc.)

This list is not comprehensive, so please contact me to discuss your idea.

I am currently an Advisor on MPhil research investigating the Costa Rican quadrille in relation to cultural identity.

Qualifications

PhD Dance Studies - University of Surrey, Roehampton (2008)
MA Dance Studies with distinction - University of Surrey (2002)
BA (hons) and MA (cantab) Archaeology and Anthropology – Pembroke College, Cambridge University (2000).

Publications

‘The Spectator's Dancing Gaze in Moulin Rouge!’, Research in Dance Education, Vol. 6, Nos. 1-2, April-December 2005, pp. 97-110.

Conference Papers (selected)

International

‘Cyborg Cinema: (dis)embodying cultural memory in the digital age’, presented at Dance and Culture, The 23rd International Academic Symposium of the Korean Society of Dance, Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul, South Korea, 7th November 2008 (simultaneous translation into Korean).

• Published in the Proceedings of Dance and Culture, pp. 52-64 (English), pp. 39-51 (Korean translation)

‘Chahut: The Mediation of Rationalism and the Unruly Body in the Cancan’, presented at Re-thinking Practice and Theory, Congress on Research in Dance/Society for Dance History Scholars Conference, Centre Nationale de la Danse, Paris, 21st-24th June 2007.

• Published in the Proceedings of Re-thinking Practice and Theory, pp. 34-37.

Keynote Address

‘Revolutionary Moves: ‘the popular’ between the French and digital revolutions’, presented at Popular Dance and Music Matters Symposium, University of Surrey, 25th October 2008.

Teaching

MA

I have written a new module for the MA Performance: Dance called Performing Politics, due to commence in Sept 2009. The module explores theoretical perspectives on the dancing body, drawing on twentieth- and twenty-first-century debates about body politics. Students will develop strategies for using these debates to inform their research, choreography or performance.

For further information on this module, please contact me at c.parfitt@chi.ac.uk
I also teach on the Reflective Practice module and supervise MA dissertations.

For further information on the MA Performance: Dance, please go to www.mapdance.org or contact Marisa Zanotti at m.zanotti@chi.ac.uk

BA

I have written a new Year 2 optional module for the BA Dance programme called Popular Dance: Street, Stage and Screen. I also lead the following BA modules:

• Performance and Identity (Year 2)
  
• Modernism (Year 1)
  
• Dance Theatre Heritage (Year 1)
  I am Year 1 Tutor and supervise BA dissertations.

Links

My Academia.edu page: http://chi.academia.edu/ClareParfitt

My Roehampton University research page (including link to my thesis):
http://roehampton.openrepository.com