C-DaRE Invites….Brandon Calleja Shaw - Choreographic Rendings of Romeo and Juliet: Jessica Nupen’s Rebellion & Johannesburg and Choreographic Sabotage

As part of our C-DaRE invites series and a precursor to the Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance book launch, we are delighted to invite you to a talk by Brandon Shaw, co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance. (The book launch begins at 2pm in the same building).

A light lunch will be provided.

The Talk

Choreographic Rendings of Romeo and Juliet: Jessica Nupen’s Rebellion & Johannesburg and Choreographic Sabotage. 

Rather than fidelity and inspiration which are the hallmark of adaptive renderings, choreographic rendings take politically aggressive stances toward and unfaithful readings of Shakespeare. Dr Brandon Calleja Shaw will speak of a chapter from his current book project, which considers rendings of Romeo and Juliet by Leonid Lavrovsky (1940), Kenneth MacMillan (1965), Rennie Harris (2000), Dada Masilo (2010), and Jessica Nupen (2015).

Calleja Shaw’s talk today centres upon Nupen’s Rebellion & Johannesburg: Romeo and Juliet (R&J), performed by the Johannesburg-based company Moving into Dance. Drawing from kinetic cultures of train surfers, high-fashion youth, and pre-historic Saan ritual, R&J stages the rebellion of contemporary township ‘Freeborn’ (ie, those born post-Apartheid). Through positive and negative reviews, critical voices of R&J update 20th-century codewords for racism parading as cultural inclusivism or elitism. The talk will interrogate discourses of appropriation and suggest a model of choreographic sabotage against white European cultural imperialism. You can also watch a trailer of Rebellion & Johannesburg.

Biography

Brandon Calleja Shaw is a dance scholar and practitioner. As a scholar, he is fundamentally interested in dance as a prism, ossification, laboratory, rebel encampment for race relations. Buttressing and critiquing Foucauldian concepts through post-colonialism, contemporary race and gender studies, and empirical research, Shaw’s scholarship is an activist voice against bigotry permeated by a careful optimism.

Brandon’s research interests include choreographic interventions in race relations, props as partners, and intersections between dance and martial arts. He has held positions at Brown University and the University of Malta, and along with Lynsey McCulloch, is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance.