The Body Politic: Movement, Labor, and the Dance of Democracy

The Body Politic seeks to uncover the lived, moved, and felt experience of democracy, using artistic practice as a tool for investigation. Proposing that democracy is an embodied practice — not just an abstract ideal — the symposium will highlight artists, community leaders, scholars, and other civic actors whose work advances democratic ideals in and beyond Nashville. Drawing upon movement, sound, and other forms of artistic inquiry, sessions will investigate the interconnectivity of place, institutions, labor, and democracy. The symposium aims to foster agency and voice and to uncover power and possibility by highlighting creative approaches to civic participation in our city and beyond. This Symposium and accompanying weeklong visit by choreographer Allison Orr and her team will kick off a multi-year project titled The Choreography of Democracy.The Choreography of Democracy will be a large-scale, site-specific dance performance that will bring together Nashville-based communities, including local activists, neighborhood leaders, and students and staff from Vanderbilt University, as collaborators and performers. Set in an outdoor site central to Nashville, a city shaped by deep histories of civic action, civil rights organizing, rapid growth, and ongoing tensions around equity and representation, the work emerges at a moment when universities are increasingly visible arenas for dialogue, dissent, and decision-making. Rooted in Orr's long-term, community-based practice, the project approaches democracy not as an abstract system, but as an active practice.