The Department of Music and Dance will host a public celebration to honor Professor Sharon Freidler’s work and retirement. This event, “Making Change for Better Communities Through Dance”, will include faculty, alumni, staff, and students.

There will be live dance, video, and the spoken word to offer a well-rounded glimpse into the numerous contributions that Sharon has made to the field of dance and to our community over the years.

Among the highlights: performances by four alumni of the Dance program who have gone on to distinctive international careers in the dance world; a presentation by a fifth alumna who is one of the leading dance scholars in the U.S.; and a performance by Sharon’s Dance for PD group (Parkinson Disease), accompanied by live music.

“Critical Choreographies of Michael Jackson’s Face”

A lecture with Sherrill Dodds

October 6, 2016

LPAC Cinema

11:20A – 12:35P

Sherril Dodds, Professor of Dance at Temple University, will discuss the scholarly and public attention devoted to the transformations of popular music celebrity Michael Jackson’s face, and the little consideration of how his face works choreographically. Drawing on the lenses of dance and popular music studies, first she will examine how his early career was characterized by a fixed smile, and secondly how he mobilized his face (through a frown and a scream) as his solo career developed to stage a critique of the popular music industry.

Professor Dodds has authored Dance on Screen: Genres and Media from Hollywood to Experimental Art (Palgrave, 2001), Dancing on the Canon: Embodiments of Value in Popular Dance (Palgrave, 2011), and co-edited Bodies of Sound (Ashgate, 2014). She is a founder member of the UK PoPMOVES research group, has been a visiting scholar at Trondheim University (Norway), Griffith University (Australia), and Stanford University (US), and was the recipient of the 2015 Gertrude Lippincott Award for her article “Facial Choreographies and the Choreographic Interface.”