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The Power Of Environment As A Tool For Inspiration: Engaging Students Through In-Studio Vs Site-Specific Choreography, Taylor Kath

Master's Theses

The goal of this study was to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of in-studio and site-specific choreographic experiences with the desired result to discoverhow choreographers created, danced, and perceived this work. The research was conducted in a rural area and due to the vast and open terrain, there were incredible opportunities for site-specific work, providing artists with great advantages for inspiration. In a low-populated state with little access to urban art, generating site-specific dance occurrences was vital for both seeing and experiencing dance. The aim of this research was to determine whether in-studio or site-specific choreography provides more inspiration to …

"To Get A Job In A Broadway Chorus, Go Into Your Dance:" Education For Careers In Musical Theatre Dance, Lauran Stanis

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to identify necessary education and experiences for dancers who wish to pursue a career in musical theatre dance and identify the content dancers who want to pursue careers in musical theatre dance should be studying. In this project, two groups of individuals were surveyed about their education and experiences. These individuals were those with dance degrees, and those working professionally in musical theatre as dancers or choreographers. A total of 174 subjects participated in the study. Of these participants, ninety-two were dance degree holders and eighty-two were musical theatre dance professionals. Two surveys were …

Embodying Empathy: Engaging High School Students In Social Awareness Through The Choreographic Process, Rachel Wade

Master's Theses

The goal of this study was to gauge growth of student empathy and social awareness as they collaborated through the choreographic process. There were eighteen participants in this study. Through learning about one individual’s experience growing up during the Civil Rights Movement, students used movement and the creative process to unpack ideas and concepts they learned. Through this study, participants used collaboration, communication, problem-solving, and the choreographic process to create a full-length performance. Participants gained a greater understanding and sense of empathy for the experience of the subject and others during this experience. Limitations of this study included potential bias …

A Slice Of The Big Apple: An Exploration Of The Impact Of Travel On High School Students’ Choreographic Process, Lauren Seibel

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to create, implement, and assess the results of a dance curriculum based on a long-distance travel experience as inspiration for choreography. The research spanned one semester. Participants included twenty high school dance students and nine audience members. In the study, the researcher attempted to answer the following essential questions: Q1 How can a high school dance course enhance the overall experience and understanding of traveling? Q2 In what ways can travel impact a student’s choreographic process? Q3 What aspects of traveling are most helpful for high school students when exploring their ability to choreograph? …

Artistic Gestures: Choreography In The Artist's Portrait Film, Kristin D. Juarez

Film, Media & Theatre Dissertations

This dissertation examines the artistic gestures in the artists’ portrait films made by women of color, including: Howardena Pindell, Blondell Cummings, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Mickalene Thomas, and Jumana Manna. As an interdisciplinary genre, artists’ portrait films rethink the moving image’s relationship to cinematic vocabularies of narrative and develop innovative choreographies, or aesthetic arrangements, of the moving body and the moving image. This dissertation adopts the term artistic gesture to engage the ways artists use aesthetic experimentation from other mediums to create intimate portraits that call our social contracts into question. Through an engagement with choreography, this dissertation examines the central …

Idiosyncratic: The Formation Of Artistic Voice Through Movement Research And Choreographic Processes, Kerry Healy

Honors Theses

This project seeks to answer how individual voices are formed through dance and choreography. The answer to this question was discovered through physicalized research and embodying concepts and tasks during my Senior Project choreography process. My dancers and I experimented with the idea of self versus society: how do we differentiate our own artistic voices from the voices of those around us? How do we remain ourselves when we are so greatly influenced by society? Artistic voice greatly influences and forms our identities as humans. The answers to these questions lie within personal aesthetics, the philosophical study of beauty and …

16:9 - A Study Of Manipulating Perceptions Through Movement, Samantha Weeks

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the concepts of editing and manipulating through the deconstruction and rebuilding of ideas. Inspiration sprung through researching the job of a film editor, and noting how an editing action takes place in everyday life. Using Thelma Schoonmaker’s body of work, which includes her film editing on a number of Martin Scorcese's films, I examined this idea of manipulation through choreographing my Senior Dance Project. Titled 16:9, the dance also shows the power of deconstruction through a thoughtfully constructed short film, which is presented halfway through. A film editor can take documentary footage and make the end result …

Dance: Music, Movement, And Performance, Elise Beal

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Dance is an art form that incorporates many different mediums. Music is selected to determine the quality of movement that is visualized. Movement becomes realized through repetition of listening to music and outside influences. All dances require collaboration between choreographer and dancers to construct the piece and prepare for performance. The process of development, refinement, and completion is known as the choreographic process. The methods for the process include determining the style of movement and choosing music to satisfy the inspiration. Once music is selected, movement and steps can be determined with influences from previous pieces or other choreographers. The …

Oscar. Delta. Echo. A Study On The Physical Poetics Of Gratitude, Victoria Michalowsky

Honors Theses

This document chronicles my choreographic process during my final year at Dominican University of California. It explores how loss can be understood through the embodied experience and expression of gratitude. The arc of relationships, through the process of introductions, intimacy, and absence, is communicated as a tender ode, expressed both in words and in dance.

The primary source comes from the finished dance and the choreographic process itself. The themes also draw inspiration from the works of Oscar Wilde, John O’Donohue, and Kimerer LaMothe as well as the poetry of David Whyte, Mary Oliver, and Jane Hirschfield. Through this process, …

Moving Through, Moving On: Examining The Life Well Lived Through The Lense Of Impermanence, Aidan O'Leary

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the themes from Walking Each Other Home, the work I choreographed as part of my graduation requirements in the Alonzo King Lines BFA Program at Dominican University. I begin by making the case for the academic discussion of dance, including barriers to the development of the field and my place in it. Asserting that dance is a subject of religious merit, I place my piece within a broader context of dance pieces that deal with topic and themes of myth and spiritual truth. I then give a brief overview of Buddhism, centering around the Four Noble Truths …

Composite Bodies: Construction And Deconstruction Of Our Identities Through Movement, Pauline Mosley

Honors Theses

This thesis examines some of the roles artists take on as humans, separate from their lives as artists and how said roles impact in the forming of our identity. Applying the deconstructionist theory by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, phenomenology by Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau- Ponty, and the journals of students involved in the study, the idea that the body and mind must work as one in order to create movement is dissected and reconstructed. Beginning with investigating the roles artists are born into, create for themselves and think they have, dancers involved in the study use their own …

Saudade: An Exploration Of The Choreographic Process And The Power Of Dance, Audrey Erickson

Honors Theses

This paper serves as a reflection on my choreographic process as a LINES BFA senior and as an investigation into the innate power of human creative movement. I will document the challenges and joys of producing movement in the dancing arts, as well as illuminate the physical and psychological power of movement harbored within the practice of Dance Movement Therapy, an enduring form of psychotherapeutic movement used to promote emotional, social, cognitive, and physical well-being. The main goals of my personal choreographic experience, as well as those of my fellow Dance Majors were three-fold: 1) the cultivation of an encouraging …

Music In Motion: Interpreting Musical Structure Through Choreography In Gershwin’S "An American In Paris", Spencer Reese

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the relationship between the theoretic interpretation of music (through analysis of a score) and the kinesthetic interpretation of it (through dance). While compelling choreography often evokes the same expressive qualities as a score, music and dance each have expressive and structural components. This study examines how formal elements of a musical score are embodied in choreographic interpretation.

Gershwin’s symphonic poem An American in Paris, conceived as concert music, was almost immediately interpreted in dance. It also inspired larger narrative works, including a film choreographed by Gene Kelly and a musical helmed by Christopher Wheeldon.

Gershwin’s life …

Lady Alhambra, Gabriela Castillo

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I make a retrospective analysis of the creative process through which I conceived my original solo performance piece, Lady Alhambra: a 15-minute one-person comedy that tells the story of Nila, a Cuban-American vedette and autodidactic spiritualist working at a cabaret called the House of Mambo. I define my creative process in three stages, each classified and described in chapters one through three. Chapter one describes the initial stage of exploration. Chapter two describes the intermediate stage of evolution. Then chapter three describes the final stage which is the performance. Lastly, I contemplate on the future of …

Kardía: A Choreographic Investigation Utilizing The Human Heart, Rebekah R. Mayfield

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The research project, Kardía; A Choreographic Investigation Utilizing the Human Heart, examined how findings regarding the study of the heart influences and expands choreographic options for and approaches to dance as a work of art. The heart is a unique and intricate organ that helps sustain life within a human body. Examined for this project were the structure, actions and functions of the human heart. This data informed and inspired the concepts that were applied to my choreography, culminating in the presentation of my original work entitled Kardía; The Quietest Voice. The creative process I used for this project …

Mobilizing Jewishness, Gabriella Foster

Honors Theses

As a dance practitioner and self-identified Jew, I am deeply committed to social action through performance. Over the course of the past year, I explored the capacity of contemporary dance practices to support Jews in reflecting on and conceptualizing their Jewish experience. Through literary and creative research, the designing and facilitating of movement workshops in mid-Maine Jewish communities, and the creation of an evening-length performance piece titled, Shelanu (Ours), I discovered the numerous ways in which these two aspects of my identity could enrich one another. In the wake of several anti-Semitic incidents both nationally and locally this year, this …

The Art Of Language: American Sign Language And Dance, Lily Adams

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Dance and American Sign Language (ASL) are two separate entities which share a place in the world as communication through movement. For this project, I extended my knowledge and understanding of two disciplines, ASL and dance, through evidence-based research practices while integrating that research with my creative process and experience within a classroom-based setting. Through this framework of research, coursework, and experimentation, I drew relations between dance and ASL as communication. The results of my research are presented in this report as well as in a piece of choreography I created based on the integration of ASL with a choreographic …