Contemporary Performemory - by Layla Zami (Paperback)

About the Book

This book looks at dance works created in the twenty-first century by choreographers identifying as Afro-European, Jewish, Black, Palestinian, and Taiwanese-Chinese-American. It explores how contemporary dance-makers engage with historical traumas to reimagine how the past is remembered and how the future is anticipated.

Book Synopsis

Contemporary PerforMemory looks at dance works created in the 21st century by choreographers identifying as Afro-European, Jewish, Black, Palestinian, and Taiwanese-Chinese-American. It explores how contemporary dance-makers engage with historical traumas such as the Shoah and the Maafa to reimagine how the past is remembered and how the future is anticipated. The new idea of "perforMemor"y arises within a lively blend of interdisciplinary theory, interviews, performance analysis, and personal storytelling. Scholar and artist Layla Zami traces unexpected pathways, inviting the reader to move gracefully across disciplines, histories, and geographies. Featuring insightful interviews with seven international artists: Oxana Chi, Zufit Simon, André M. Zachery, Chantal Loïal, Wan-Chao Chang, Farah Saleh, and Christiane Emmanuel.

Review Quotes

Layla Zami's concept of "perforMemory" applied to dance creates a fascinating intricate network among historical trauma, diaspora, resistance, and empowerment, moving from embodying the past to representing the present with a vision of the future--expressed so well in Oxana Chi's choreographic work. I love the book's poetic language, and I dove into its linguistic paintings, most new to me and challenging in an intriguing way.--Dr. Dagmar Schulz, Prof. emerita, Alice-Salomon University of Applied Sciences / John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin

Carefully thought out and clearly written and presented, Contemporary PerforMemory makes a significant contribution to several fields: memory studies, dance studies, postcolonial studies, diaspora studies, affect studies, as well as scholarly reflections on the archive, on embodiment, the emotions and movement, all from an informed, critical feminist perspective. Zami makes surprising connections that reveal important resonances between shared histories of remembrance.--Prof. Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University

Zami is committed to a rigorous methodology in order to think through and theorize contemporary dance in diaspora. Her book is intercultural and cross-cultural and demonstrates an understanding of race and gender from the perspective of someone who can think globally. This, combined with a discerning critical eye for reading unique contemporary performance, has yielded a remarkable body of research.--Prof. Nadine George-Graves, Chair of Dance, Ohio State University

About the Author

Layla Zami (Dr.), born 1985, is Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, where she teaches in the fields of humanities, performance studies, and art history. She also works as Interdisciplinary Artist-in-Residence with Oxana Chi Dance & Art, and is Co-Curator of Dance at the International Human Rights Art Festival. Zami obtained a PhD in Gender Studies at Humboldt-University in Berlin, where she was awarded a Teaching Quality Prize for her seminar Performing Memory. She received a Doctoral Fellowship from the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Scholarship Fund (ELES/BMBF) and was a Visiting Research Scholar at Columbia University.