​AMS Music and Dance Study Group​
By Nicolas Poussin - Unknown source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=100831
AMS MDSG and AMS Statements about Black Lives
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Members and officers of the Music and Dance Study Group stand in solidarity with those who work daily to dismantle systemic racism and strive to engage in that same work as we go about our scholarship, education, service to the AMS, and work in our communities. Click here to see the AMS statement in reaction to the killing of George Floyd by President Suzanne Cusick.
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MISSION STATEMENT
The Music and Dance Study Group (MDSG) of the American Musicological Society (AMS) is a forum for musicologists interested in the study of dance, an art to which music is tied more than any other. Our members explore all periods of history, from the medieval era through the twenty-first century. Members use methodologies ranging from archival studies to critical theory, addressing questions—whether with an aesthetic, formalist, cultural, and/or historical focus—about the meetings of dance and music. Members examine myriad dance practices and locations: ballet to breakdancing, contra dance to contemporary dance, dances performed at court or on a concert stage, on screen or on the street.
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The purpose of the MDSG is to bring together music-and-dance scholars with such varied interests and promote a cross-pollination of ideas. Our goals include revealing the shared concerns and mutually beneficial interrelationships between dance studies and music studies; advocating for the study of dance both in music studies and across the humanities; providing a space for fostering discussions during national and regional meetings of the AMS; and encouraging the exchange of ideas, information, and materials beyond the conference circuit.
The MDSG holds a business meeting, an evening panel, and a dance workshop at every AMS Annual Meeting. It maintains a website, member directory, Facebook page, and Google Group / listserv on which to share announcements and discussions. The MDSG is always open to new members, to different understandings of dance/movement and music/sound, and to expanding existing creative, critical, pedagogical, and research paradigms surrounding music and dance.
JOIN US ON GOOGLE GROUPS
To join, please visit the AMS Music and Dance Study Group google group (click here or on the link below) or e-mail the Google group. Please note that anyone with an email may join and then receive and post messages, but only those with a Google Account can interact via the web, customize List delivery options, and view archives. If you do not have a Google account, simply e-mail us with a request to be added. (All requests are subject to administrative approval, so there may be a short delay.)
CLICK HERE TO DONATE
Over the years the AMS Music and Dance Study Group has brought in scholars, artists, and musicians to participate and lead in our events at the American Musicological Society Annual Meeting and we have paid these contributors through AMS guest artist funds and casual donations made by devoted members. We are now set up to formally take in donations at the AMS website. In particular, in 2019 we funded the remainder of the honorarium for our AMS Boston guest artists Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer, who were primarily funded through a generous AMS grant. We also hope to build funding for future guests and events through the AMS website. We invite you, if you are able, to consider helping in our efforts. Click on the link to donate:
https://www.amsmusicology.org/donations/donate.asp?id=18130 ​