Lecture by Sherrill Dodds, 10/6 @ 11:20AM

“Critical Choreographies of Michael Jackson’s Face”

A lecture with Sherrill Doddsimage of Michael Jackson Album cover

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.”