• Dance

  • Darcey Callison

  • Associate Professor

Darcey Callison profile image

E callison@yorku.ca

EDUCATION

BFA (Victoria), MA (Simon Fraser), PhD (York)

BIOGRAPHY

Darcey Callison is a choreographer and dance scholar who has worked extensively with Authentic Movement, the physical voice, Viewpoints and post-modern theatrical dance. His creative studio-based research integrates new media and cultural studies with postmodern dance methodologies. He is also a physical trainer whose Personal Body Work workshops focus on diverse improvisational techniques and somatic investigations for personal creativity and authentic physical expression.

Dr. Callison is the artistic director of Da Collision, a dance company he founded in 1990. His choreographies have been produced by Da Collision, DanceWorks, T.I.D.E and others, and have been seen across Canada and in Mexico. With an expansive choreographic interest that ranges from formal explorations of the physical to character-based narratives, his works include In the Belly of the Whale (1991), Shellac (1992), Where Were You When the Chair Hit You (1993), With the Moon Falling from Your Eyes (1994), The Mourning of Queens (1995), Albrecht: Personal Deviations on Giselle and Other Romantic Conflicts (1998), Revisiting the Sandbox (2002), Reconstructing John (2007), and (Re) Tracing Fred (2009).

Dr. Callison’s doctoral dissertation in Communication and Culture focused on Hollywood’s choreography for men. Analyzing the physical codes and movement signatures used to dance masculinity for Hollywood, he researched the construction of a gendered whiteness that Hollywood disseminated to preserve the patriarchal apparatus that forms and informs the utopian patriarchy of the ‘America Dream’.

Professor Callison has combined his scholarly findings with his studio-based creative research to develop a methodology for choreographically researching the danced languages constructed for male performers in Hollywood films. Grounded in this research are his two of his most recent choreographic creations: Reconstructing John, which explores John Travolta signature disco solo from the film Saturday Night Fever, and (Re)Tracing Fred, an original dance/media work that deconstructs and re-interprets the ‘traces’ of Fred Astaire’s movement vocabulary within many of Hollywood’s male dance stars, from Gene Kelly and Elvis Presley to John Travolta and Jon Heder’s Napoleon Dynamite.

Dr. Callison’s studio research, creation and production of (Re) Tracing Fred were supported by the Creative Research branch of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. His choreographic work has also won support from the Canada Council, Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Laidlaw Foundation.  An editorial board member for the Society of Dance History Scholars publications and for the  journal Choreographic Practices, Dr. Callison continues to pursue the fusion of studio and scholarly research as a dance artist.

Areas of Research and Academic Specialty: Contemporary Choreography, Dance Dramaturgy, Gender Studies, Culture and Communication

Performance and Research

Up caretIcon in the shape of a upward pointing caret

Darcey Callison’s work:

1. The (Re)Tracing of Fred
2. A Drowning – Holly Smalls

 

Dance

People of AMPD

Assistant Professor

Melissa Davis

Contract Faculty

Richard Moore

Administrative Staff

Michelle Johnson

Professor Emeritus

John Gittins

Administrative Staff

Tom Osborne

Administrative Staff

Frances Tee

Administrative Staff

Lora Zuech

Assistant Professor

Amy Hillis

Assistant Professor

Noam Lemish

Contract Faculty

Stephen Koven

Contract Faculty

Sharon Marshall

Contract Faculty

Robert John Cappelletto

Contract Faculty

Mark Skazinetsky

Contract Faculty

Larry K. Graves

Contract Faculty

John David Lum

Contract Faculty

John Brownell

Contract Faculty

James Stager

Contract Faculty

Eric Hall

Contract Faculty

Edward Wilson

Contract Faculty

Edward Tait

Contract Faculty

Edward Moroney

Contract Faculty

Don Englert

Contract Faculty

Charles Matthew Brubeck

Contract Faculty

Anne Lederman

Contract Faculty

Abounasr Amir Koushkani

Administrative Staff

Vicki Tran

Administrative Staff

Triporna Das

Contract Faculty

John Holland

Assistant Professor

Randolph Peters

Associate Professor

Doug Van Nort

Professor Emeritus

Dorothy de Val

Associate Professor

Mark Chambers

Associate Professor

Michael Coghlan

Associate Professor

Lisette Canton

Contract Faculty

Sacha Williamson

Contract Faculty

Ray Williams

Contract Faculty

Sharlene Wallace

Contract Faculty

Richard Whiteman

Contract Faculty

Kevin Turcotte

Contract Faculty

Peter James Vivian

Contract Faculty

Jennifer Taylor

Contract Faculty

Phig Choy Sue

Contract Faculty

Philip Seguin

Contract Faculty

Karen Rymal

Contract Faculty

Arthure Ardie Roth

Contract Faculty

Barry Romberg

Contract Faculty

Roy Patterson

Contract Faculty

Raisa Nakhmanovich

Contract Faculty

Ravi Naimpally

Contract Faculty

Anthony Michelli

Contract Faculty

Irene Markoff

Contract Faculty

James MacDonald

Contract Faculty

Lorne Lofsky

Contract Faculty

Rick Lazar

Contract Faculty

Brian Katz

Contract Faculty

Kelly Jefferson

Contract Faculty

Frank Falco

Contract Faculty

Mark Eisenman

Contract Faculty

Rita di Ghent

Contract Faculty

Tara Davidson

Contract Faculty

Judith Cohen

Assistant Professor

Mike Cadó

Contract Faculty

Corey Butler

Contract Faculty

Norma Burrowes

Contract Faculty

Gareth Burgess

Contract Faculty

Susan Black

Contract Faculty

Stephanie Bogle

Contract Faculty

William Beauvais

Contract Faculty

Barbara Ackerman

Professor Emeritus

Robert Witmer

Professor Emeritus

William Westcott

Professor Emeritus

Philip Werren

Professor Emeritus

Steven Otto

Professor Emeritus

David Mott

Professor Emeritus

David Lidov

Professor Emeritus

Austin Clarkson

Professor Emeritus

Robert Sterling Beckwith

Associate Professor

Louise Wrazen

Associate Professor

Ron Westray

Associate Professor

Patricia Wait

Associate Professor

Sundar Viswanathan

Contract Faculty

Matt Vander Woude

Associate Professor

William Thomas

Professor Emeritus

Casey Sokol

Associate Professor

Robert Simms

Professor Emeritus

Trichy Sankaran

Professor Emeritus

Catherine Robbin

Professor

Jay Rahn

Professor Emerita

Christina Petrowska Quilico

Associate Professor

Stephanie Martin

Professor Emeritus

Arthur Levine

Associate Professor

Sherry Johnson

Associate Professor

Al Henderson

Professor Emeritus

Barry Elmes

Associate Professor

Karen Burke

Associate Professor

Rob Bowman