Sionna Seminar: Bodies Across Codes: The Genealogy of the Complete Dancer in Contemporary Spain

This seminar examines how institutions shape relationships between dance techniques, embodied practices, and identities in contemporary Spain. Tracing the historical construction of the bailarín completo ("complete dancer"), it explores ongoing negotiations between the national, the universal, and the foreign in Spanish dance. It also considers how technical hybridisation continues to inform understandings of identity, including gender, bringing these questions into dialogue with contemporary ethnochoreological perspectives. Admission is free and all are welcome. 

Patricia Bonnin Arias is a tenured Associate Professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid), where she leads ARES INVESTIGA, a research group in the performing arts, and co-directs [LaPE] (Performing Arts Thought Lab). A former professional ballet dancer, her research brings together Dance Studies, sociology of the arts and institutional analysis, with particular attention to the ways in which bodies, techniques and artistic identities are historically and socially constructed.