Lou Forster (EHESS, Paris)

“Street Ballet: Urban planning and experimental dance in the 1960s”

The 1960s was a period of increasing politicization of the city. The critic and activist Jane Jacobs, who played a central role in the revival of the neighborhood in New York, chose dance to challenge the authority of urban planners. She proposed the concept of the "sidewalk ballet" to describe the intelligibility of the city that inhabitants developed through their everyday activities, an experience that eluded the maps of urban planners. But what form of dance was Jane Jacobs really referring to, and how did this concept intersect with the work of choreographers who were inventing, at the time, a form of dance based on so called "pedestrian activities"?

Curator and art historian, Lou Forster operates at the intersection of the human sciences, dance and visual arts.

This event is open to the public and part of AIR.

Arts Interdisciplinary Research (AIR) is a holistic research center and forum for creative and scholarly research across the arts that includes cutting-edge colloquia, exploratory seminars, lecture demonstrations, launches of research publications and creative works, reading groups, faculty talks, and stand-alone conferences initiated by the faculty of the Center for the Performing and Cinematic Arts.