Oct 8: Life & Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980 to 1983



life-and-deathLife & Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980 to 1983

a one-day symposium featuring Tim Lawrence (University of East London), Bernie Gendron (music historian), Leonard Abrams (East Village Eye), Patti Astor (downtown actor, Fun Gallery, Wild Style), Johnny Dynell (Mudd Club, Pyramid, Danceteria, Area), Steven Harvey (New York Rocker), Danny Krivit (Roxy), Sal Principato (Liquid Liquid), John Robie (musician, producer), Sharon White (The Saint), Pat Ivers & Emily Armstrong (Nightclubbing), Kit Fitzgerald (video artist), Marvin Taylor (NYU), Jeffrey Deitch (gallerist), Michael Holman (Canal Zone, Gray, Negril, breaking impresario), Chi Chi Valenti (Mudd Club, Danceteria), Michael Zilkha (ZE Records), & Sukhdev Sandhu (NYU)
October 8, Saturday
10 am to 6 pm

This day-long symposium is devoted to an era of NYC’s downtown music that barely earned itself a name, but whose protagonists – feeding dub, hip hop, new wave, no wave, orchestral music and rock feeding into the post-disco mix – created one of the most creative and dynamic periods in New York’s music history. Its backdrop is the rise of Ronald Reagan, real estate inflation, and, perhaps most of all, AIDS wreaking havoc on the city’s overlapping art and dance scenes. Soon music majors returned to dance with a vengeance (re-injecting it with a commercial edge that contributed little in the way of artistic innovation). The crack epidemic besieged the city’s poorest communities so that the conditions no longer existed for disparate groups to explore commonalities. The glorious reign of mutant exploration started to close down, though its creative and communal example would inspire future generations.
For full schedule of panels, click here.

Performance Studies Studio
721 Broadway, 6th Floor, room 612

Followed by a photography show & book reception from 6:30 to 9:30 pm at Howl Gallery (6 East 1st Street), featuring Tim Lawrence, Allan Tannenbaum, Ande Whyland, Harvey Wang, Bobby Grossman, & Richard Boch.
For more information, please contact Sukhdev Sandhu at ss162(at)nyu.edu.
Organized by the Colloquium for Unpopular Culture at the Draper Program, NYU and the Centre for Cultural Studies Research at the University of East London; co-sponsored by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality, Department of EnglishDepartment of Performance Studies, and Department of Social & Cultural Analysis.



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