York University

Faculty Member, Dance

About

Mary Fogarty is a cultural sociologist with an interdisciplinary academic background including degrees in music, popular culture, education, and film studies. Her current ethnographic research focuses on cross-cultural exchanges in the history of breaking.

Recent publications include "Breaking expectations: Imagined affinities in mediated youth cultures" (Continuum, 2012), "A Manifesto for the Study of Popular Dance" (2010) in Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies (SDHS), “’Each One Teach One’: B-boying and Ageing” (2012) in Ageing and Youth Cultures: Music, Style and Identity, as well as a forthcoming online video about freestyling (improvisation) for Music and Arts in Action, and special edition of Contemporary Music Review.

Dr. Fogarty has been an invited guest speaker at Griffith University, Australia (keynote speaker for Creative Communities II), New York University (hip hop archives panel), University of Exeter, UK (improvisation) as well as an invited dance workshop leader for music therapists (Nordoff Robbins Centre), for dancers and choreographers, for youth and for prisoners.

She performed at Breakin' Convention, an international hip hop dance theatre showcase, at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival Theatre in Scotland and continues her physical practice in the art of breaking (b-girling).

Recently, she became involved as a dance educator for the Pathways to Education programming in Rexdale (Toronto, Canada). She will also be leading a workshop on June 2nd with Luca "Lazylegz" Patuelli for the annual conference of the Canadian Society for Dance Studies in Montreal, Canada.

Professor Fogarty has been the recipient of several awards including a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, ORSAS (University of Edinburgh), and Canada Graduate Scholarship (SSHRC). She is a member of IASPM, CORD and SDHS and has served on committees for PoP Moves, Pulse Ontario Youth Dance Conference, Manifesto Festival Dance Council, IASPM-UK, IMHSD, and CORD.

Photo by Rob Northway

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