Dance Commons^™

The Dancer's Paradox: Dance In Egyptian Film, Roberta L. Dougherty

Roberta L. Dougherty

Dance Of Light And Loss, Clark Lunberry

Clark Lunberry

On a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon in the Ogikubo district of western Tokyo, in the dark basement of Saburo Teshigawara's dance studio and performance space known as Karas Apparatus, an audience gathered to see the dancer's newest solo performance, Fool. The uncurtained stage in the small theatre was empty and unlit, the stage itself far larger, perhaps three times larger than that tight space reserved for those attending the event. What lights there were faintly illuminated only the slightly raised rows of cushions upon which the forty of us in the audience took our seats, waiting for the performance …

The Extended Marketing Mix In The Context Of Dance As A Performing Art, Yong-Gun Lee, Brian H. Yim, Charles W. Jones, Bong-Gyung Kim

Charles W. Jones

Dancing The Numinous: Sacred And Spiritual Techniques Of Contemporary American Belly Dancers, Jeana Jorgensen

Jeana Jorgensen

In this paper, I explore how contemporary American practitioners of belly dance (as Middle Eastern dance and its many varieties are often called in the English-speaking world) conceptualize not only the spiritual dimensions of their dance, but also how the very notion of performance affects sacred and spiritual dance practices. Drawing on interviews with this community, I describe the techniques of sacred and spiritual belly dancers, how these dancers theorize performance, and how the conflicts inherent to patriarchal mind-body dualism are resolved in these practices. My purpose here is twofold: to document an emergent dance tradition and to analyze its …

So...You Can Dance: The Blending Of Two Perceptions, Parker T. Ovalle

Parker T. Ovalle

Popular television shows such as So You Think You Can Dance showcase “live” dance performances, accompanied by a panel of expert judges that provide commentary feedback and professional criticism of each performer’s overall execution and performance from week to week. The professional feedback of the performances helps guide audience members, with little knowledge of dance technique, to determine which dancer was the most successful in the implementation of the work overall. Due to advancements in technology over the past century, the ability to instantly create and send information across the United States (within a matter of seconds) has helped elevate …

Choreographing Lived Experience: Dance, Feelings And The Storytelling Body, Karin Eli, Rosie Kay

Karin Eli

Although narrative-based research has been central to studies of illness experience, the inarticulate, sensory experiences of illness often remain obscured by exclusively verbal or textual inquiry. To foreground the body in our investigation of subjective and intersubjective aspects of eating disorders, we—a medical anthropologist and a contemporary dance choreographer—designed a collaborative project, in which we studied the experiences of women who had eating disorders, through eight weeks of integrating dance practice-based, discussion-based and interview-based research. Grounded in the participants’ own reflections on choreographing, dancing and watching others perform solos about their eating disordered experiences, our analysis examines the types of …

Bringing Liturgical Dance Into The Twenty-First Century, Trisha Holmes, Lisa Smith

Trisha Holmes

Dance Is a very powerful and ever changing form of communication found in virtually every civilization on earth. Because it is developing, new forms like Liturgical dance can often go unnoticed by the dance community as a whole. Liturgical dance can be traced back to the early slave churches of the 1700’s where it began as free form worship. Slaves and free “Blacks” gathered in large groups to worship, during these gatherings persons felt compelled by the “spirit of God” to move in wild abandon, like the “ring shout”, a tradition brought to America by the slave trade.(Allen ,“Slave Ships …

Movable Pillars: Organizing Dance 1956-1978, Katja Kolcio

Katja Kolcio Ph.D.

Movable Pillars traces the development of dance as scholarly inquiry over the course of the 20th century, and describes the social-political factors that facilitated a surge of interest in dance research in the period following World War II. This surge was reflected in the emergence of six key dance organizations: the American Dance Guild, the Congress on Research in Dance, the American Dance Therapy Association, the American College Dance Festival Association, the Dance Critics Association, and the Society of Dance History Scholars. Kolcio argues that their founding between the years 1956 and 1978 marked a new period of collective action …

Video: Body Languages: Choreographing Biology, Katja Kolcio

Katja Kolcio Ph.D.

Co-taught by professors Manju Hingorani and Katja Kolcio at Wesleyan University, this course was an introduction to human biology. From scientific and choreographic perspectives, students practiced movement awareness and learned basic principles of choreography, and applied these skills to the exploration of human biology. Manju Hingorani, Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Katja Kolcio, Associate Professor of Dance and Environmental Studies

Review Of The Body Eclectic: Evolving Practices In Dance Training, Katja Kolcio

Katja Kolcio Ph.D.

Faking It: The Necessary Blind Spots Of Understanding, Katja Kolcio Ph.D.

Katja Kolcio Ph.D.

Scholarly research in the field of dance begins with the methodological premise that some things are only effectively known through their enactment. This paper utilizes movement practice as a site for cultural research. The imminent, fluctuating and heightened physicality of movement research, reconstructed here in writing, contributes a different perspective toward the understanding of authenticity in relation to the construction of knowledge. The is written in the present-tense from the perspective of the protagonist in order to convey the ethnographic site in progress, and to highlight the visceral aspect of the issues at hand.

Faking It: The Necessary Blind Spots Of Understanding, Katja Kolcio Ph.D.

Katja Kolcio Ph.D.

Scholarly research in the field of dance begins with the methodological premise that some things are only effectively known through their enactment. This paper utilizes movement practice as a site for cultural research. The imminent, fluctuating and heightened physicality of movement research, reconstructed here in writing, contributes a different perspective toward the understanding of authenticity in relation to the construction of knowledge. The is written in the present-tense from the perspective of the protagonist in order to convey the ethnographic site in progress, and to highlight the visceral aspect of the issues at hand.

Byron And The Choreography Of Queer Desire, Steven Bruhm

Steven Bruhm

No abstract provided.