The Dance and Movement Analysis Section of the American Folklore Society is looking for papers, panels, workshops, and lec/dems for the 138th AFS Annual Meeting, to be held at the Renaissance Asheville Downtown Hotel in Asheville, North Carolina from October 27–31, 2026. Deadline is April 6, 2026 for emailing us with ideas and questions, at dance.section@afsnet.org.

The AFS 2026 theme is “Community Persistence: Reckoning with Change, Imagining Futures.” Dance and Movement Analysis is accepting papers on a range of topics related to the social and cultural dimensions of dance and movement, including proposals for hands-on movement workshops. Workshops can be singly or jointly run.  For instance, at the 2025 AFS, three instructors provided mini-lessons in their distinctive dance forms. Scholars, practitioners, teaching artists, and students are welcome to submit. 

As dance folklorists, we are curious about everyday creative communication–how is embodied knowledge transmitted, how does performance negotiate communal belonging and produce cultural possibilities, and how do movement cultures interface with broader social affordances–from diaspora to digital technology? We welcome evolving definitions of ‘folk,’ ‘traditional’, and ‘social’ dance, and work that develops new methodological approaches to the analysis of movement and embodied practice. Proposals might examine the intersecting traditions of vernacular and theatrical dance, planned and spontaneous dance, art and politics, movement and labor, appropriation and transculturation, trained and pedestrian gesture, etc. They might consider performance as a process of strategic representation, or engage with the processes underlying rehearsal, transmission, and the mediation of (un)conscious cultural scripts. Interdisciplinary approaches are welcome, including history, performance studies, ethnography, peace studies, sociology, ethnic & area studies, gender & sexuality studies, dance pedagogy, etc.