I’m excited to welcome to some new members of our fieldwork team for 2016-2017. MTAP has contracted two fieldworkers, Nic Gareiss and Dave Langdon, who have some excellent areas of research planned. Both Nic and Dave are performers, practitioners, and scholars of traditional dance and music. They are deeply committed to their communities of practice and research, and care about reciprocity when undertaking fieldwork.
I wanted to introduce Nic and Dave to Great Folks blog readers because they will be writing blog posts on their fieldwork. Without further ado…
Nic Gareiss
Nic Gareiss is a professional performer, teacher, and dance researcher living in Lansing, Michigan. His interests include vernacular dance traditions from many locations, especially Appalachia, Quebec, and the Irish diaspora. Nic holds a degree in Anthropology from Central Michigan University and a MA in Ethnochoreology from the University of Limerick. He has written on the intersections of dancing bodies, gender, sexuality and nationhood. Gareiss' MA thesis based upon his ethnographic work with LGTBQ competitive Irish step dancers was the first piece of scholarship to query the experience of sexual minorities within traditional Irish dance. Other publications include “An Buachaillín Bán: Reflections on One Queer’s Performance within Traditional Irish Music & Dance” in The Meanings and Makings of Queer Dance edited by Clare Croft on Oxford University Press (June 2017) and “The Lion, The Witch, and the Closet: Heteronormative institutional research and the queering of ‘Traditions’” co-written with Aileen Dillane in Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology, edited by William Cheng and Gregory Barz on Oxford University Press (forthcoming). Gareiss’ present research seeks to illuminate issues of national identity, gender, and sexual orientation via ethnography and embodied practice. As a performer, Gareiss has concertized in fourteen countries and continues to tour and teach internationally, working with dance communities and presenting solo percussive dance choreography.
Michigan sustains many remarkably rich traditional dance communities throughout our state. Within these diverse communities bodies become sites of cultural practice as dancers create, transmit, theorize, and engage their heritage through their physical selves. Because of dance's corporeality, moving bodies often become politicized when the communities in which they exist are marginalized. However, dance remain a powerful and transcendent means by which tradition-bearers maintain their cultures, subvert subjugation, and both imagine and enact brighter futures. Nic's research focus lies at the intersections of traditional dance and marginality; in the ways that intangible cultural dance heritage is sustained in communities that are subject to systematic oppression due to race, indignity, national origin, disability, gender, and sexuality. Through the Michigan Traditional Arts Program, Nic hopes to bring both attention and resources to dancers in our state that may be experiencing this kind of marginalization. Whether it takes the form of African-American vogueing in Detroit, Yemeni dance in Dearborn, Appalachia clogging in Bellaire, or Indian Kathak in Midland, Nic is looking forward to helping connect Michigan State Museum to Michigan's vibrant jiving, bouncing, shuffling, gesturing tradition-bearers.
Nic Gareiss is a professional performer, teacher, and dance researcher living in Lansing, Michigan. His interests include vernacular dance traditions from many locations, especially Appalachia, Quebec, and the Irish diaspora. Nic holds a degree in Anthropology from Central Michigan University and a MA in Ethnochoreology from the University of Limerick. He has written on the intersections of dancing bodies, gender, sexuality and nationhood. Gareiss' MA thesis based upon his ethnographic work with LGTBQ competitive Irish step dancers was the first piece of scholarship to query the experience of sexual minorities within traditional Irish dance. Other publications include “An Buachaillín Bán: Reflections on One Queer’s Performance within Traditional Irish Music & Dance” in The Meanings and Makings of Queer Dance edited by Clare Croft on Oxford University Press (June 2017) and “The Lion, The Witch, and the Closet: Heteronormative institutional research and the queering of ‘Traditions’” co-written with Aileen Dillane in Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology, edited by William Cheng and Gregory Barz on Oxford University Press (forthcoming). Gareiss’ present research seeks to illuminate issues of national identity, gender, and sexual orientation via ethnography and embodied practice. As a performer, Gareiss has concertized in fourteen countries and continues to tour and teach internationally, working with dance communities and presenting solo percussive dance choreography.
Michigan sustains many remarkably rich traditional dance communities throughout our state. Within these diverse communities bodies become sites of cultural practice as dancers create, transmit, theorize, and engage their heritage through their physical selves. Because of dance's corporeality, moving bodies often become politicized when the communities in which they exist are marginalized. However, dance remain a powerful and transcendent means by which tradition-bearers maintain their cultures, subvert subjugation, and both imagine and enact brighter futures. Nic's research focus lies at the intersections of traditional dance and marginality; in the ways that intangible cultural dance heritage is sustained in communities that are subject to systematic oppression due to race, indignity, national origin, disability, gender, and sexuality. Through the Michigan Traditional Arts Program, Nic hopes to bring both attention and resources to dancers in our state that may be experiencing this kind of marginalization. Whether it takes the form of African-American vogueing in Detroit, Yemeni dance in Dearborn, Appalachia clogging in Bellaire, or Indian Kathak in Midland, Nic is looking forward to helping connect Michigan State Museum to Michigan's vibrant jiving, bouncing, shuffling, gesturing tradition-bearers.
Dave will be looking into hammer dulcimer music in Michigan. Michigan is one of the major states for hammer dulcimer playing and is also the home of the Original Dulcimer Players Club (ODPC) Funfest held at the Osceola County Fairgrounds in Evart, MI, each year. There are several dulcimer clubs and also music jams attended by hammer dulcimer players and others. Dave will be attending several of these jams and documenting the music and musicians at these club meetings and jams. This might include making audio recordings, doing interviews, taking photos, making video, etc. The end result will be a written report of activities and findings.
I look forward to hearing about the work Nic and Dave produce and I know you will too! Got any tips for traditional artists we should interview or topics we should document? You can send them to msum.mtap@gmail.com.
Thanks to Nic and Dave for providing biographies and summaries of their research plans.
