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UBC Colloquium 2014

Improvising Across Boundaries


Saturday, June 21st and Sunday, June 22nd, Robson Square Room C 400

An unconventional colloquium presented by Coastal Jazz and the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI)

Coastal Jazz and the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) will host a two-day colloquium on Saturday June 21 & Sunday June 22, 2014, focused on the theme of improvising across boundaries.

Presentations by members of the artistic and scholarly communities will focus around the ways in which improvisation – in music, in theatre, in dance and in text – can offer strategies and practices to help us to negotiate with boundaries and borders, with the challenges presented by the politics of gender, history and social class or by multiculturalism, by race and racism.

How can improvisation provide performers and audiences with the means to encounter and to come to terms with the ways in which we have undertaken, various practices of inclusion and of exclusion, of community-building and of confrontation? Can improvisation enable new modes of cultural and social understanding?

Admission is free.

To view a copy of the schedule, please click here.

Improvisation is, simply put, being and living this very moment. No one can hide in music, and improvising in music is to be truly in this very moment and being completely yourself, with all your qualities and faults. It is probably the most honest state for a human being to be in.

– John McLaughlin in an interview with Daniel Fischlin.