WEATHERING PITS VERSUS TRAMPLE MARKS: A REINTERPRETATION OF THE “DINOSAUR DANCE FLOOR”: A JURASSIC NAVAJO SANDSTONE SURFACE IN THE VERMILION CLIFFS NATIONAL MONUMENT, ARIZONA

ABSTRACT Within the eolian Lower Jurassic Navajo Sandstone, exposed in the Coyote Buttes area of Vermilion Cliffs National Monument in Arizona, a site (informally known as the “Dinosaur Dance Floor”) is reinterpreted as an enigmatic, modified (possibly pedogenic) eolian surface that was exposed and further modified and accentuated by modern weathering and erosion. The resultant surface is covered with small, shallow potholes or weathering pits, with no direct evidence of dinosaur activity.

School Middle Leaders and Change Management: Do They Need to Be More on the “Balcony” than the Dance Floor?

The term “middle leader” in the context of English education has evolved into an overarching title to describe a leadership position for practitioners who have school wide responsibilities in addition to their classroom duties. Such responsibilities can consist of pastoral leadership; curriculum leadership; leadership of additional student support; leadership of a team or phase and leadership of a specific school improvement priority. Educational middle leadership is founded on the notion of bringing together the duty of contributing to a strategic leadership remit whilst remaining firmly within the role of a classroom practitioner. It is argued that this ‘space’ for middle leadership is due to the increasingly hierarchical organisational structures of schools; consequently, being viewed as the ‘middle layer’. However, it is often unclear how much real authority or autonomy middle leaders have either to act strategically or make leadership decisions for their school. Despite many studies having previously explored the impact of senior leadership in improving school systems through deploying varied leadership styles, there is an absence in literature underpinning what constitutes effective strategic middle leadership. This study explored and interrogated the strategic ability of middle leadership, to contribute to this discourse. It critically reflected on the effectiveness of middle leadership, in a small-scale context, when making sustainable curriculum changes to a primary school’s maths curriculum. The research methodology adopted was an autoethnographic approach. It used a documentary method, that consisted of a reflective journal, kept by the first researcher, who was also a maths curriculum middle leader within an English primary school. The reflective journal was used as an authenticated document for elucidation and analysis. The main findings suggested that collective leadership was appropriate for this research context. The study further evidenced the reality of how personal, yet important understanding leadership cultures are, in all levels of leadership. The conclusion pointed to the direction of middle leaders being more successful if they were strategic, and therefore must both find and develop systems that assist them to be located on the “balcony” rather than only the dance floor.

Gavin Vinson – a curious endocrinologist 1939 - 2021

Few who knew him would not agree that Gavin Vinson was one of the truly colourful characters in British Endocrinology over the last half century. Many will recall his contributions to Society meetings not only in the lecture theatre, but also in providing the musical entertainment at our receptions, and on the dance floor after conference dinners. Sadly Gavin died earlier this year after a long illness and we felt it important for members of the Society to remember this extraordinary man who strongly supported and contributed to this organization.

The sensing eye: Intimate vision in couple dancing

Vision tends to be associated with the mind and theorized as the least bodily sense. Notably, the eye often symbolizes distance. Foregrounding the fleshy embeddedness of the gaze through an analysis of jitterbug, the present article stresses the bodily and intimate significance of vision in dancing. Analyzing ethnographic observation and interview data, we develop a phenomenological approach to dance and gaze that stresses the need to address multi-sensoriality, adding vision to the perspective of tactile-kinesthetic touch. However, the article develops a more-than-optic perspective on “dancing as vision.” The “sensing eye” is analyzed, first, as a body technique central to couple dancing and, second, as the use and meaning of vision across spatial distance, as between dancers and bystanders. Throughout the article, the dance floor unveils connections between eye and body, self and other, and passive and active and thus pushes notions of emplacement and embodiment.

Groove Fields. Understanding the Dance Floor from an Art-Based Research Perspective

This contribution examines groove dynamics across various spatial contexts such as the dance club and the artistic performance space. As groove dynamics do not occur in a spatial vacuum but are embedded in affective environments, they need to be approached from an interdisciplinary perspective that ties together findings from experimental field studies, performance studies, musicology, cognitive hermeneutics etc. and places them in the physical, anatomic and acoustic contexts of concrete dance situations. In that way, the dance floor can be understood as a space of entanglements where acoustic, movement and kinaesthetic grooves mark and create a fluid territory of improvisational interaction and communication.

KONSEP RWA BHINEDHA DALAM TARI REJANG SAKRAL LANANG DI DESA MAYONG BULELENG BALI

ABSTRAKPola lantai Tari Rejang Sakral Lanang di Desa Mayong berkonsep rwa bhinedha yang terlihat dari garis lurus satu banjar lalu membentuk garis melengkung. Kedua garis tersebut merupakan simbol purusa dan pradana untuk mencapai suatu kehidupan atau keseimbangan. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah mengetahui konsep rwa bhinedha dalam pola lantai tarian tersebut. Teknik pengumpulan data penelitian ini adalah metode observasi tidak berstruktur, metode wawancara, studi dokumentasi, dan studi kepustakaan. Berdasarkan analisis data yang dilakukan, diperoleh hasil bahwa pola lantai Tari Rejang Sakral Lanang di Desa Mayong pada saat pementasan menggunakan konsep rwa bhinedha yang dilakukan di Jaba Tengah berbentuk kalangan pada setiap pura (Kahyangan Desa) yang terdapat di Desa Mayong. Pola lantai hanya terdiri dari satu banjar panjang yang membentuk garis lurus dan melengkung di dalamnya. Penelitian ini menggunakan Teori Semiotika dari Ferdinand de Saussure yaitu penanda dan petanda. Garis lurus dan garis melengkung yang membentuk lingkaran pada pola lantai sebagai penanda dan petanda adalah garis lurus tersebut merupakan simbol purusa dan garis lengkung merupakan simbol pradana. Kedua garis tersebut merupakan bagian dari konsep rwa bhinedha. ABSTRACT The floor pattern of the Rejang Sakral Lanang Dance in Mayong Village has a rwa bhinedha concept which is seen from a straight line and forms a curved line. Both of these lines are purusa and pradana symbols to achieve a life or balance. The purpose of this study was to determine the concept of rwa bhinedha in the dance floor pattern. The research data collection techniques are unstructured observation methods, interview methods, documentation studies, and library studies. Based on the data analysis, the results showed that the floor pattern of the Lanang Sacred Rejang Dance in Mayong Village during the staging used the concept of rwa bhinedha which was carried out in Jaba Tengah in the form of circles in each temple (Kahyangan Desa) located in Mayong Village. The floor pattern consists of only one long line that forms a straight and curved line in it. This study uses the Semiotics Theory of Ferdinand de Saussure namely markers and markers. Straight lines and curved lines that form a circle on the floor pattern as markers and markers are straight lines are symbols of the purusa and curved lines are symbols pradana. These two lines are part of the concept of rwa bhinedha.

“What Comes From Men and Women Dancing”

The epilogue connects tropes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of Jews, dance, and modernization with late twentieth- and twenty-first-century representations. Popular works such as Fiddler on the Roof (1964), Dirty Dancing (1987), Rebecca Goldstein’s Mazel (1995), Kerry Greenwood’s Raisins and Almonds: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (1997), Helene Wecker’s The Golem and the Jinni (2013), and Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver (2018) reveal the continued efficacy of the mixed-sex dancing trope in fictional representations of Yiddish-speaking Jews. These works are often less didactic than nineteenth-century predecessors; they envision more opportunities for female agency and frequently end happily. Not only is the dance floor a flexible space, the dance trope is a flexible metaphor for the concerns of Jewish communities in the face of cultural transitions. In other words, the trope of Jewish mixed-sex dancing charts the particularities of the Jewish “dance” with modern culture.

How Jews Learned to Dance

Dance classes were a key site for negotiating Jewish gender roles. Beyond simply training young people in proper physical deportment, dance lessons also guided them through gender, social, and class expectations, including those related to more tender emotions. Traditionally pious Jews learned to dance so that they could participate properly in weddings and other festive community celebrations. Acculturated and upwardly mobile Jews took advantage of the opportunity dance lessons offered to mingle with socially advantageous contacts. In this sense, dance lessons rehearsed the importance of balls for courtship. Even before they began seeking out marriage partners, young people learned how to behave on the dance floor and practiced appropriate behavior with their dancing partners. While Yiddish texts question whether dance lessons are compatible with proper sexual morality, German texts are concerned with the possibility of embarrassing oneself in a dance class.

The Space of the Dance Floor

Mixed-sex dancing is frequently identified with transgressive sexual behavior, yet in Jewish culture it is also identified with the changes wrought by modernity. Where Jewish men and women once lived very separate lives, in the period between 1780 and 1940 they tested out their newfound freedoms in heterosocial leisure culture sites, the most thrilling of which was the dance floor. In this space, dance partners explored their physical compatibility without the involvement of their families or a matchmaker. The popularity of mixed-sex dancing transcended language, class, and national boundaries. In literary texts, the dance floor is a heady, passionate space in which emotions are excited, and characters imagine that ordinary social rules no longer apply.