Ultimate Dance Playlist (forthcoming)

FORTHCOMING

The Ultimate Dance Playlist is a public dance project that uses the idea of a jukebox as an index for gathering people through music and dance. The project takes from the tradition of dance halls and community dance gatherings that is still being practiced in some parts of the country.

Conceptualized to be “staged” or more accurately organized in a public space where people can go in and out throughout the day or in the span of its operational hours, the Ultimate Dance Playlist (UDP) aims to transform a public venue into an institutional jukebox, playing dance music by request.

Interested parties are urged to visit Ultimate Dance Playlist's Facebook page on the days leading to the event, and post a request from any of the songs part of the publicly available playlist. All requests will be played at the event itself.

The playlist itself is comprised of songs that have the word "dance" in their titles or lyrics, and each one has been contributed by a practicing choreographer including Miranda herself. Among the contributors are Alexandra Baybutt (UK), Myra Beltran (PH), Matthew Day (AUS), Mia Cabalfin (PH), Anastassos Karahalios (GR), Noriko Kato (J), Diego Maranan (PH), Paul Morales (PH), Jethro Pioquinto (PH), Rhosam Villareal Prudencio Jr. (PH), Arco Renz (B), Emma Saunders (AUS), Erl Soriila (PH), and Iwanna Toumpakari (GR).

Facebook also provides a satellite platform for Ultimate Dance Playlist. Every song played at the designated venue during the event will be posted on the event page as it is being played, allowing audience members who are not at the venue to tune in.

Audience members are invited to listen. They may also dance to the music, but are not expected to dance.

A critical part of the modernist project in dance has been a questioning of its relationship to music. Miranda sneaks music back in, but only to make a more systemic interrogation: When listening to music, must one dance to it for him/her to dance to it, or can listening be dance? Must a dancing body even be present in a situation for the situation to become a work of dance? Is it possible that the dancing body the social corpus itself constituted by relations between choreographer, institution, and public, to which the dance--in this instance the playing of music at the space by request--is no more than an index? 

Originally conceptualized to celebrate International Dance Day which takes place last April 29, Ultimate Dance Playlist is not only an invitation to dance, but also an invitation to rethink what dance is and what networks are involved in its production.

Ultimate Dance Playlist is not only an invitation to dance, but also an invitation to rethink what dance is and what networks are involved in its production.