Dance Education, Decolonization, and the Climate Crisis: Developing Ethical Pedagogies

ABSTRACT

To date, there has been minimal analysis of the intersections between dance pedagogy and the climate crisis. Arguing that it is essential to approach the climate crisis via the lens of decolonization and underscoring the indivisible links between modernity, coloniality, and the climate emergency, the author considers what it might mean to develop an ethical dance pedagogy for a student population facing the grim consequences of climate change. After highlighting the academy’s decolonizing failures, the author applies principles from Indigenous scholars Andreotti, Hunt, and others to offer a pedagogical case study of her own deep dive into her position on stolen land. Arguing that it is critical to model such digging to demonstrate our collective complicity in the hegemonic systems of modernity/coloniality, the author concludes by bringing together emerging methods developing both inside and outside of dance education to propose a scaffolding for an ethical dance pedagogy for the twenty-first century.

KEYWORDS:

• Dance pedagogy
• climate change
• ethics
• coloniality
• decolonization

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This unwillingness to change is, in part, due to universities’ increasing dependence upon private funding models deeply linked to economic players (such as oil companies) that are exacerbating the crisis (see https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/dec/11/uk-universities-took-89m-from-oil-firms-in-last-four-years).

2. The university where I work (University of Calgary) has been under a 6% reduction in budget each year for the past three years since the United Conservative Party came to power in 2019.

3. For examples of such failures, see Carr-Stewart (2001); https://www.mccarthy.ca/en/insights/blogs/canadian-era-perspectives/federal-court-appeal-overturns-limitations-ruling-major-historic-treaty-claim; and https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100014597/1572547985018.

4. This includes, for instance, the initiation by the United Conservative Party in 2019 of a $30 million taxpayer financed project, the Canadian Energy Centre—self-titled by the UCP as the War Room—whose sole purpose is to indict any organization that is perceived to criticize the oil sands. For more information, see https://www.cbc.ca/news/Canada/calgary/alberta-war-room-launch-calgary-1.5392371 and/or https://www.cbc.ca/news/Canada/calgary/alberta-canadian-energy-center-war-room-fiasco-1.5665926.

5. I would like to deeply acknowledge and express gratitude to the work of Indigenous scholars noted here, as well as to the Indigenous knowledge keepers and friends—of particular note, Chantal Stormsong Chagnon and Sandra Lamouche—who have supported my dig with grace, patience, and wisdom over the past few years. For more information, see https://caw-wac.com/about-caw/.

6. Although popularized by Abram (1996), more-than-human is a term that rests on Indigenous philosophies that have existed for millennia. The term is intended to point to the larger systems and beings—biotic and abiotic—that share this planet.

7. One note: Students self-selected (after being invited) to perform at the protest event (which occurred after all grading was submitted for the course). In other scenarios, students have specifically requested to join me for protest performances (see https://tractionart.wixsite.com/home/procession-for-end-times-i); it is critical to note, however, that all such occurrences were through creation situations unassociated with the university (and that students volunteered for these events with absolutely no solicitation by me). There could certainly be some questions raised about students participating in such events while still having the potential of taking courses with me at a future date. Yet, what these situations demonstrate is how determined students are to find situations of empowerment in the face of the global circumstances in which we find ourselves.

8. Anthropocene is a popular term (Crutzen 2002) that is intended as a shorthand for denoting the current time period where humans have had a geological impact on the planet. I use it here to position this discussion of dance and the climate crisis alongside others of similar nature taking place in other fields. But I use it only once and in quotes to demonstrate how scholars (Todd 2015; Yusoff 2018) are problematizing the “normalization” of such coined terms, terms that show coloniality’s reign in both academic and activist circles.

9. The GTDF collective notes that most approaches to addressing the crises of the present sit in the categories of “soft” or “radical” reform, while what is needed is a paradigmatic shift at the roots of the system, what they typify as “beyond reform” (Andreotti and Stein 2021, 18). It could be argued that any assertion of change within the academy could fall under the first two categories.