Dance
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Item Emergent choreography: Spontaneous ensemble dance composition in improvised performance(1/1/2013) Martin, Nina; Caldwell, Linda Almar; Gamblin, Sarah; Candelario, RosemaryThis study examines the experience of dancemakers, who choreograph spontaneously within the complexity of the ensemble while embedded in a performance environment. The dissertation articulates such themes as the self-organizing aspects of spontaneous ensemble dancemaking; the role of implicit choreography and motivations for engaging in improvised performance; and the function of recursive dance practices that cycle through the spontaneous performance event and the participant's studio practice. The research focused on five evenings of performance by four different ensembles: the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation ensembles (Seattle, WA), the LIVE Dance Theater (San Diego, CA), and the Lower Left Performance Collective (Stolzenhagen, Germany). I also conducted face-to-face interviews with three dance artists, Barbara Dilley, Lisa Nelson, and Susan Sgorbati, all of whom have developed ensemble compositional methods for dancemaking. I employed a constructionist approach and engaged in the research process as a participant observer. The data set includes post-performance journaling, performance videos, a study questionnaire (see Appendix B), my research journal, and post-performance group interviews with the performers. I interpret this data through a lens that incorporates a dynamical systems approach that provides models for understanding self-organizing systems such as the individual choreographer in spontaneous ensemble dancemaking, the ensemble exhibiting characteristics of emergent group cognition, and the live audience. As the narrative emerges through the dissertation chapters, The Continuum of Deliberation serves to disrupt binary understandings of terms such as choreography and improvisation and, instead, proposes a dialectic relationship wherein the dance artist enacts both an implicit and explicit spontaneous choreography. This dialectic provides ground for framing individual dancemaking epistemologies emerging as an Ensemble Epistemology in performance. The self-organizing principles underlying ensemble dancemaking in performance allow each dance to choreograph itself and to create a new dance that is expressive of an Ensemble Aesthetic. As the dance unfolds in performance, the dynamic environment includes a live audience that emerges in the study as a co-creator of the dance. The data indicate that communal aspects of this dance form motivate the participants' growth as dancemakers and social beings as well as contributing to the vibrancy of this complex choreographic method.Item This land is your land: Performing philosophy in an American terrain(1/1/2014) Salyers, Candice; Bruce, Frances; Hanstein, Penelope; Caldwell, Linda Almar; Candelario, Rosemary; Gamblin, Sarah; Shade, Mary WillifordThis dissertation brings together a site-adaptive performance practice and text- based research to explore the potential of dance performance to exist as philosophical inquiry. The five research sites (Glacier, Joshua Tree, Acadia, Shiloh, and Sequoia National Parks) provided a range of terrains, while the dance I chose to perform (Significant Figures) remained constant. Through the persistent effort of one movement sequence within these dramatically different landscapes, distinct lessons about the qualities and circumstances of body and land appeared. The same movement inhabiting different environments allows me as a performer to gain a range of understandings, not simply about what the dance means but also about how a dance can teach its performer and become a process of philosophical inquiry. As a journey through both interior and exterior landscapes, this dissertation research considers brain, body, and world as inextricably connected in acts of thinking, following Andy Clark's concept of "extended cognition." In addition, philosopher Brian Massumi's exploration of what he terms "the body as sensible concept" further reveals the role of the body in thinking processes. His concept provides a foundation for my work in this dissertation process, while my work describes an instance of enacting this phenomenon--not for the sake of illustrating his ideas but as a living vibration of some threads of its potential. Through a combination of philosophical and autoethnographic writing in the text of the dissertation, I am seeking to bring abstract considerations into fleshier communion with readers. Taken all together the data chapters of this dissertation outline an evolution in my thinking, growth, and development of self-knowledge and hopefully also demonstrate the potential of performance to exist as a practice of developing consciousness and philosophical understanding. By inviting the reader into my personal discoveries, I hope to develop a level of trust between us for the purpose of creating a doorway into the reader's own discoveries and into a collective, or at least cooperative, movement of thought and thinking of movement.Item The pleasure of enactment: Eclectic artist practices of dancers and dance makers following the Judson era(1/27/2020) Livingston, Loretta; Candelario, RosemaryABSTRACT LORETTA LIVINGSTON THE PLEASURE OF ENACTMENT: ECLECTIC ARTIST PRACTICES OF DANCERS AND DANCE MAKERS FOLLOWING THE JUDSON ERA MAY 2020 The territory of this dissertation and the inquiries that drive it reside in features and meaningfulness of practice for a purposeful sample of nine experimental dance artists who began their dance careers in the eighties and nineties and who have links to avant-garde mentors who came to prominence in the sixties and seventies, during what has come to be known in the professional concert dance world as the Judson era. Following the groundbreaking Judson era, concert dance making and performance practices opened to broad eclecticisms, inviting emergent dance artists to shape their practices in individualistic and innovative ways, mixing and intersecting multiple approaches to dance embodiment through somatic studies, improvisation techniques, martial and contemplative arts, other arts disciplines, and interactions with nature. In this artist-based qualitative study, the purpose is to listen to artist-participants describe what it feels like to be inside one’s practice, and how having a practice supports their lives. The focus of the inquiry is on the subjective experience and personal value of each artist’s practice. The artists included in the study through open-ended conversational interviews are Claire Filmon, Kathleen Fisher, K.J. Holmes, Luis Lara Malvacías, Kara Jhalak Miller, Melinda Ring, Melanie Ríos Glaser, Michael Sakamoto, and Roxanne Steinberg. As the researcher, I find affinities between my dance making practice and qualitative inquiry that support the dissertation study. I devise a writing style that features a choreographed mix of the nine artist-participants’ voices, my informative and creative voices, and the voices of experts and scholars in other disciplines. I invent and employ a fictitious character who brings the total of research participants to nine, plus one. Using the Nine Plus One Voice throughout the dissertation, I offer movement scenes as interludes that invite the reader to experience movement in everyday adventures. I aim for the entire text to embody a sense of rhythm and motion, acknowledging dance and dance-like words as vehicles for knowledge of self and world. While honoring the uniqueness of each artist-participant’s experience of one’s self in practice, I acknowledge a deep spirit of adventuresome experimental dance that unites them.Item An historical study of six selected ethnological dances from the Pacific Islands of Samoa and Hawaii(1/31/1970) Martin, Vicki; Duggan, Anne; Campbell, Mary; Hayes, Gene; Lyle, BertItem Processual place: Intersections in dance performance, human geographical discourse, and everyday life(1/9/2013) Munjee, Tara; Caldwell, Linda Almar; Keating, AnaLouise, 1961-; Gamblin, SarahPlaces as locales can be understood as physical locations that are meaningful, multiply interpreted, and subjectively understood. My research explores comparative understandings of place derived from dance performance appreciation, geographical discourse, and experiences of everyday life. The intersections of these three distinct arenas I find most evocative in the experience of the phenomenon I label as "performance place." A spatial-temporal event, performance place represents a melding together of personal, historic, relational, political, social, aesthetic, artistic, and asynchronic factors that contribute to an individual's apprehension of physical spatiality as featured in contemporary dance performance. A hybrid methodology including heuristic narrative analysis, interview data coding, phenomenological methods, and a survey of geographical literature is used to assist me in unpacking the experience of performance place. The salient experiences evoked and embedded for me in the performances discussed connect to selected postmodern and feminist human geographical constructs of "place." Further, as dance performance appreciation is subjectively-perceived but also fluidly interpreted over time, personal understandings of a dance may change, as may interpretations of a place. In contemporary discourse, place is fluid, multiply-perceived, and dynamic, and the processes that occur in place are arguably most important in imbuing a locale with a specific affect or read for any individual. Just as dance performance emphasizes movement and motility so, too, contemporary understandings of place embrace ongoing shifts and changes in definition, and place's "processual" nature is viewed as a most significant feature. For the purposes of analyzing and discussing performance places, in the last chapter I offer the reader a method of analyzing the phenomenon of performance place as it connects to understandings and experiences of everyday life, as well as to theories from contemporary human geographical discourse. Using postmodern and critical geographer Edward W. Soja's theoretical construct of ThirdSpace as a departure point, I create a model for identifying, problematizing, and exploring the myriad aspects of lived spatiality that may emerge in the valuing of dance performance. This model is reflexive in nature, for as geographical theories and experiences of everyday life may inform the dance appreciation process, dance appreciation may well inculcate newly-discovered and critical understandings of geographical discourse and lived life. As a result of these reflexive understandings, a viewer may then seek to change places or create new places to inhabit in the social-spatial world.Item Preserving a legacy, preserving ballet history: restaging the ballets of Antony Tudor(1/9/2013) Knoblauch-O'Neal, Christine Ann; Caldwell, Linda; Youngblood, Pamela; Williford-Shade, MaryThe purpose of this study was to examine the work of the Répétiteurs of the Tudor Trust in restaging the ballets of Antony Tudor. I drew on my interviews with Sally Bliss, executor of the Tudor will and Trustee of the Tudor Trust; Donald Mahler, senior Répétiteur of the Tudor Trust and former Tudor dancer; Kirk Peterson former principle dancer with American Ballet Theatre and Répétiteur of the Tudor Trust; Amanda McKerrow former principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, Répétiteur of the Tudor Trust, and last ballerina to work with Mr. Tudor; and James Jordan, Répétiteur in-training with the Tudor Trust and Ballet Master with the Kansas City Ballet. Additionally, I drew on my experiences working with three of the participants during the restaging of Dark Elegies for the Performing Arts Department at Washington University in St. Louis along with my years of dancing with Mr. Tudor at American Ballet Theatre. The dissertation study traces the process taken by each of the Répétiteurs in restaging Mr. Tudor's ballets and explores their understanding of and appreciation for his unique aesthetic and choreographic intention. The Répétiteurs' processes are further shown to be enhanced by their experiences as dancers working with Mr. Tudor along with their continued in-depth research and analysis into the nature of Tudor's genius and its impact on his craft. All the collected data from the R's is further presented in context with the chorographical, historical, psychological, and literary influences felt to inform and further shape Tudor's choreography. The study was developed through qualitative research methods for data collection, analysis, and interpretation. The data collection involved not only interviews with the Répétiteurs, but also interviews with three college dancers who had recently learned and performed a Tudor ballet restaged by one of the participants, and observations of each Répétiteur during his or her restaging process. Also, Sally Bliss, given her position, allowed full access to the archival videos of past productions of the Tudor ballets held by the Tudor Trust. Three areas of interest emerged from this diverse data collection: 1) The sense of authenticity for each restaged ballet was grounded in and secured through the Répétiteurs' experiential relationships with Tudor and/or their continued research and critical analysis of documents, videos of past productions, and biographical materials. 2) The Répétiteurs' process of restaging encouraged a sense of exploration and discovery for the dancers in order to better understand and embody the essential elements of the Tudor ballets and 3) The role of the Répétiteurs as the tellers of stories or the importance of the recounting and retelling of stories within the restaging process which created the presence of Tudor, as a Transcendental Tudor. I hope that this research adds to the literature on the creative process, the choreographic process, the restaging process, archiving and documenting dances, and the where and when of making ballet history.Item Celluloid classicism: Early Tamil cinema and the making of modern Bharatanāṭyam(11/14/2017) Krishnan, Hari; Candelario, RosemaryThis dissertation investigates how two of the most prominent cultural forms of modern South India—Tamil cinema and Bharatanāṭyam dance—share complex and deeply intertwined histories. It addresses the entangled emergence of these two modern art forms from the 1930s to the 1950s, which were decades marked by distinctly new intermedial modes of cultural production in cosmopolitan Madras. This project unsettles received histories of modern Bharatanāṭyam by arguing that cinema—in all its technological, moral, and visual complexities—bears heavily and irrevocably upon iterations of this “classical” dance. By bringing archival research into conversation with choreographic analysis and ethnography with film performers and Bharatanāṭyam dancers, this work addresses key questions around the fluid and reciprocal exchange of knowledge between film, dance, and stage versions of Bharatanāṭyam during the early decades of the twentieth century. The dissertation includes deliberations on subjects such as the participation of women from the devadāsī (courtesan) community in the cinema, the period of the urban “reinvention” of dance from the standpoint of cinematic history, the impact of the forces of cultural nationalism and regionalism, and the making of new aesthetic vocabularies and techniques for Bharatanāṭyam in the cinema. The work concludes with notes on the persistence of cinema and Bharatanāṭyam as ever-entangled vernacular idioms in the global age of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Taken together, the materials presented in this dissertation provide a detailed cultural history that draws lateral paravisual linkages between the production and circulation of Tamil cinema and Bharatanāṭyam dance.Item Dance on the St. Louis Stage, 1850-1870(12/30/1978) Kassing, Gayle; Bentley, Richard; Cox, Rosann; Keeton, Gladys; Mott, JaneItem A history of Austin Ballet Theatre at the Armadillo World Headquarters(12/30/2016) Clark, Caroline Sutton; Caldwell, Linda Almar; Candelario, Rosemary; Williford-Shade, Mary; Fuchs, Jordan; Hanstein, PennyThe purpose of this qualitative historical inquiry is to investigate the performances of Austin Ballet Theatre at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, TX from 1972 to 1980. Austin Ballet Theatre was an amateur ballet company performing classical and contemporary works at the Armadillo World Headquarters, a psychedelic music club. In addition to allowing for the composition of a historiography of this unusual pairing, the dissertation research results in multiple insights into an important, although largely unknown, period of cultural history in the Austin community. It also highlights how connections among diverse groups of people and practices not only iterated through the situation of practice then but continue to influence historical narratives about the ballet and how it is remembered. The research was conducted using an oral history methodology with 19 participants representing a variety of perspectives on these ballet performances. These interviewees included dancers, mothers of the dancers, visual artists for both the ballet and the Armadillo, Armadillo staff, the lighting designer for the ballet, a dance critic for the newspaper, and audience members. Some documents, mostly newspaper reviews and articles along with playbills and broadsides, also emerged from the archives of the Austin History Center and the dancers’ private collections. The use of open-ended oral history methods resulted in a constellation of analytical themes surrounding what the participants identified as the most important aspects of this history: learning through performing, and making ballet accessible to the community. Further investigation of these themes resulted in the questioning of sociocultural frames of ballet and how Austin Ballet Theatre’s practices functioned for dancers and audiences in this time and place. The dissertation also investigates the narrative, discursive condition of history composition through the creation of a historiographic metafiction about Austin Ballet Theatre at the Armadillo World Headquarters. The metafiction, included as an appendix, provides an alternative way of experiencing the data towards fulfilling the research purpose of representing the multi-layered processes of qualitative historical inquiry. This research therefore supports a world-making view of dance practices and considers how such a perspective impacts historical narratives.Item Dance and immersive performance: A multicase study of three international immersive productions(12/30/2016) Ritter, Julia M.; Candelario, Rosemary; Caldwell, Linda Almar; Fuchs, Jordan; Hanstein, PenelopeThis dissertation research focuses on the role of dance in immersive productions. The study was prompted by investigation of the extant literature—including scholarly research and critical reviews—which revealed a gap in the literature regarding the role of dance in immersive productions. The purpose of this study was to explore the impact and influence of dance in immersive performance through a multicase study of three contemporary international immersive productions: Sleep No More by Punchdrunk (United Kingdom), Then She Fell by Third Rail Projects (New York), and Dance Marathon by bluemouth inc. (Toronto). The three productions were chosen as case studies for the ways in which dance was prioritized as a primary mode of expression by the artistic directors, including Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle of Punchdrunk; Zach Morris, Tom Pearson, and Jennine Willett of Third Rail Projects; and Ciara Adams, Stephen O’Connell, Sabrina Reeves, Lucy Simic, and Richard Windeyer of bluemouth inc. The increased popularity of productions that engage audiences differently, particularly through immersion, has prompted this research that explores how dance and choreographic strategies are used as tools to enhance audience experience. Primary data-gathering techniques included participant observation during performances of these productions; interviews with artistic directors, dancers, and audience members directly engaged with the immersive productions chosen as case studies; and examination of existing literature, including published scholarship, critical reviews, websites, social media sites, and fan blogs. In analyzing each of the three case studies, I draw on theater scholars, including Josephine Machon and Gareth White, as well as current research into trends of audience participation in the arts. Through an integrated process of philosophical questioning and qualitative research design, the study follows a theoretical line of inquiry focused on dance as a strategy of immersion in productions created by artistic directors, performed by dancers, and experienced by audiences. The inclusion of multiple voices allowed for discovery of diverse conceptual and perceptual frameworks for dance and immersive performance, which in turn shed light on the ways in which dance is contributing to the expanding parameters of new audience engagement models. This research contributes to the field of international dance studies for the ways in which it centralizes dance in the discourse surrounding immersive performance and contributes perspectives of dance to immersive performance that have heretofore been largely missing. By contributing to the understanding of the role of dance as a strategy of immersion and its impact on the participation of audiences, issues and insights that emerge from this research may resonate with theorists and practitioners in contemporary performance and the fields of audience, media, cultural, and theater studies, furthering analyses of dance in discussions that can yield continued insight for those dedicated to the discipline of dance through both practice and scholarship.Item Dancing Christian: Narrative, embodied action, choreography in American evangelical and emergence Christianity(12/30/2016) Wright, Emily; Candelario, Rosemary; Caldwell, Linda Almar; Sahlin, Claire L. (Claire Lynn), 1961-Dancing Christians occupy marginalized spaces on two fronts: within the context of American Christianity, dance is a denigrated faith practice with a contested history; within the context of Western concert dance, Christian dance is often viewed as technically and aesthetically substandard. The current literature on dance and Christianity is limited and tends to focus on amateur practices within the church worship service setting. This dissertation examines dancing Christians in the professional context to determine how faith informs dance practices and, conversely, how dance influences practices of faith. For this research, I developed a multisite, qualitative study of four professional dance companies. During a fourteen-month period, I conducted participant-observations and ethnographic interviews with artistic directors, choreographers, and company members who identify as evangelical and/or emergent Christians. In exploring the role of the body, I note that some dancing Christians communicate contradictory messages around the body, as in the case of one company which situates the body as a vehicle to be used in Christian service while simultaneously affirming the notion of body/mind wholeness as the ultimate end of Christian practice. Others frame the body as a starting point for audiences and dancers to share in a common resonance with the human experience. I contend that traditional devotional activities, such as prayer, Bible study, and singing, are embodied actions that dancing Christians use as a means to prime the body to experience Western concert dance as religious activity. Further, rather than demonstrating a unified aesthetic sensibility, my findings show that dancing Christians produce a diverse range of choreographic constructions, from story ballets framed as church services to postmodern works abstracted from individual spiritual journeys. I argue that dancing Christians frame professional dancing as religious practice in order to actualize individual and communal religious identities.Item The effects of several types of teaching cues on postural alignment of beginning modern dancers: a cinematographic analysis(12/31/1981) Minton, Sandra Cerny; Hinson, Marilyn; Lockhart, AileeneItem The development of four dance compositions suitable for presentation in stadiums and filmed as audio-visual aids(1958-08) Holm, Mary Beth; Duggan, Anne; Murphy, Mary; Dillon, Evelyn; deColigny, MarionItem A suite of original modern dance compositions based upon selected phases of life in the history and development of Oklahoma(1958-08) Rollins, MyrtleNo abstract availableItem Requiem in a Closed Room: An original Dance-Drama in modern dance idiom based upon the play entitled The House of Bernarda Alba by Frederico Garcia Lorca(1965-08) Masilunis, CaroleNo abstract availableItem The History and development of the University of the Dance at Jacob's Pillow in Lee, Massachusetts, from its inception in 1931 through the summer session of 1967(1969-08) Brown, Elsie; Duggan, Anne; Myers, Frances; Campbell, Mary; Eaton, GregoryItem A cinematographic analysis of characteristic likenesses and differences between skilled, semi-skilled, and non-skilled performance of Pirouettes(1972-08) McMillan, Margeann Hume; Sherrill, Claudine; Hinson, Marilyn; Rosentswieg, JoelItem Seulement deux: A classical pas de deux(1978-08) Fusillo, Lisa Ann; Lockhart, Aileene; Stevenson, Lanelle; Cox, RosannItem A romantic classical ballet: In memory of Degas(1978-08) Adams, Sharon Renee; Fisk, Adrienne; Lockhart, Aileene; Cox, Rosann; Smith, Mark; Keeton, Gladys