British-Bangladeshi parents offer better nutrition to their children when interventions involve the community

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
British Bangladeshi

scholarly journals Talking Politics of Contact Improvisation with Steve Paxton

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 6-18
Author(s):  
Royona Mitra
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Dance Studies ◽  
American Theater ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Contact Improvisation ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Research Opportunity ◽  
Study Methodology ◽  
E Mail ◽  
British Bangladeshi

In the autumn of 2015, on the back of the publication of my monograph Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism (Mitra 2015), I was settling into my Brunel University London-sponsored sabbatical to kick-start my postdoctoral research project, then titled “Historicizing and Mapping British Physical Theatre.” At that stage, this new field of study, methodology, and tone of enquiry felt significantly different from the decolonial spirit of my book, which examines the works of the British-Bangladeshi dance artist Akram Khan at the intersections of postcoloniality, race, gender, sexuality, mobility, interculturalism, and globalization, arguing for his choreographic choices as discerning political acts that decenter the whiteness of contemporary western dance from his position within this center. With this new project I was keen, instead, to investigate the development of “British physical theatre” as an interdisciplinary genre that emerged interstitially between and through its “double legacy in both avant-garde theatre and dance” (Sánchez-Colberg 2007, 21) with a particular emphasis on what the import of the choreographic vocabulary of partnering would have brought to these experiments. Very conscious that the now ubiquitous aesthetic of partnering in contemporary Euro-American theater dance derived its roots from the somatic explorations of contact improvisation, I was intrigued to examine how the genre of British physical theatre would have engaged with choreographic touch from its somatic beginnings in contact improvisation to its politicized and aestheticized manifestation in partnering. I was also conscious, of course, of the role that Steve Paxton, the artist whose name has become synonymous with contact improvisation's inception and development in 1970s United States, had to play in teaching contact improvisation in the dance program at Dartington College of Arts in the United Kingdom (UK) in the 1970s and 1980s. Driven by a need to examine the potential relationship between Dartington's 1970s movement experiments with Paxton and contact improvisation, and the emergence of partnering as a key aesthetic within British contemporary dance, specifically its manifestation in physical theatre, I wanted to interview Paxton himself. Needless to say, I was of course fully aware of the difficulty in making such an important research opportunity materialize. However, within months, the remarkable generosity of our dance studies network, in this instance embodied by Professors Susan Foster and Ann Cooper Albright, and the dance artist Lisa Nelson, led me to the inbox of Steve Paxton himself in November 2015. Paxton was instantly responsive to my e-mail communications, and deeply invested and committed to sharing his experiences and insights with me. We arranged our Skype interview for early 2016, agreeing that this would give me enough time to research existing interviews with Paxton, in print and on video, to ensure that I could delineate my own questions for him in productive ways. The more I researched, the more a feature of the extensive archive of interviews with Paxton revealed itself: the predominant absence of bodies and perspectives of color from the early days of contact improvisation's experiments. This absence, in turn, became more and more present in my thinking.

Intersections of Gender, Sex, and Power

2017 ◽  
pp. 1746-1764
Author(s):  
Lubna Ferdowsi
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Cultural Ideologies ◽  
Intersectional Analysis ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
British Bangladeshi

This chapter highlights the dilemma of being immigrant diasporic women in a British cultural context by focusing on the everyday life of British Bangladeshi women who are being controlled in the private sphere based on empirical research. Particularly, the chapter shows how cultural ideologies are intersecting with patriarchal norms to gain control over women bodies and sexuality. Finally, the chapter discusses the process and system of differentiation and domination through an intersectional analysis to understand how women ostensibly belonging to the same ethnic group may have different and competing experiences of migration and Diaspora.

The Sylheti Bari and the Londoni Flat

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Zeitlyn
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Spatial Arrangement ◽  
Attitudes Toward School ◽  
Children's Play ◽  
Children’S Play ◽  
Bangladeshi Families ◽  
British Bangladeshi ◽  
The Way

This article examines the ways in which migration from rural homesteads in Sylhet, Bangladesh, to urban flats in London has affected the practices of British Bangladeshi families around gender and childhood. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu on the “Kabyle house,” I describe relations between the spatial arrangement of homes and practices. Analyzing the “Sylheti bari” (rural homestead) and contrasting it with the “ Londoni (British Bangladeshi) flat,” I describe the significance of the way in which ideas of “inside” and “outside” have translated from one setting to another. I will show how the translation of these ideas to the urban landscape in London affects British Bangladeshi practices surrounding headscarf wearing, children’s play, and socializing, as well as attitudes toward school and language.

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