Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Review: 'Improvising Improvisation: From Out Of Philosophy, Music, Dance, And Literature', Aili W. Bresnahan

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This book review attempts to interpret the meaning and value of Gary Peters’ book in a way that is true to the kind of book, an experimental improvisation, that it purports to be. As such, it grapples with the difficulties of evaluating the merits of a philosophical discussion within a book that claims not to be philosophy and case studies in performance that beg the question of whether they accurately exemplify the (non-)philosophy they are meant to support. Despite these difficulties, this review ends with the conclusion that this book does, in fact, convey something essential about the nature of …

Art Infested Water, Fall 2018, Nova Southeastern University Department Of Performing And Visual Arts

Department of Performing and Visual Arts Newsletters

No abstract provided.

The Pavilion, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2005 Summer Theatre

Hailed by critics as an "an Our Town for our time," this play is by turns poetic and comic, romantic and philosophical. Peter returns to his twenty-year high-school reunion with dreams of winning back Kari, the girl he left behind after an unexpected pregnancy ended their relationship. Standing in Peter's way is Kari's bitter-as-ever resentment, her husband and the fact that Peter still hasn't grown up. As the night progresses, both Peter and Kari are led, through their interactions with a host of characters all played by a virtuosic Narrator, to face the consequences of choices made long ago and …

Crimes Of The Heart, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2005 Summer Theatre

The three MaGrath sisters are back together in their hometown of Hazelhurst, Mississippi for the first time in a decade. Lenny, the eldest, never left Hazelhurst -- she is the caretaker of the sisters’ cantankerous Old Granddaddy. Meg, the middle sister, left home to pursue stardom as a singer in Los Angeles, but has, so far, only found happiness at the bottom of a bottle. And Babe, the youngest, has just been arrested for the murder of her abusive husband, Zackery Bottrelle. Under the scorching heat of the Mississippi sun, past resentments bubble to the surface and each sister must …

Rounding Third, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2005 Summer Theatre

Don is a coach who believes that winning is what is most important in baseball, and he is all about the game. Michael is his assistant coach, a businessman who believes that kids should have fun when they play baseball. These conflicting personalities instantly clash. Don's kid is the star pitcher of the team, and Michael's kid can barely remember to keep his shoelaces tied. In addition, there are extramarital affairs going on (though the truth of them is well-hidden), and Michael's job is not all that it seems.

https://stageagent.com/shows/play/1899/rounding-third

The Taming Of The Shrew, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1985-1986 Season

A ribald, raucous, rowdy look at the eternal “battle of the sexes.” The beautiful Catherine has acquired a reputation as “Kate the Curst” because she apparently does not like the kind of potential suitors encouraged by her father. Enter the swashbuckling but roguish adventurer, Petruchio, who wants both Catherine and her dowry. The father happily agrees to the match and the resulting “battle” ends up as one of Shakespeare's most famous love matches.

Irish Dance In The State Of Utah: A History, India Eve Henrichsen

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis summarizes the history of Irish dance in Utah. Over the past 35 years, from its beginning in 1983 to today in 2018, Irish dance schools have multiplied in Utah and evolved following international trends. The first school of Irish dance in Utah was started by Maureen McTeggart Hall at the request of Harold Gottfredsen in 1983. Five years later, in 1988, Brigham Young University established an Irish dance instruction program. Following the first television broadcast of Riverdance from Dublin in 1994, the interest in Irish dance increased exponentially. The number of schools has grown, new schools have emerged …

Snoopy!, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2018 Summer Theatre

The musical sequel to YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN – deserves each of its three exclamation points. Based on the beloved Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schulz, the show sparkles with wit and warmth as it depicts life as seen through the eyes of Schulz’s unforgettable characters.

Accidental Archives Of Performance Making, Sarah Whatley

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper introduces the online toolkit created during the AHRC-funded Resilience and Inclusion: Dancers as Agents of Change project. Although the primary aim of the toolkit is the transmission of information for training purposes, the toolkit has simultaneously created a carefully curated repository of performance documents and related materials with a film at the core out of which many of the learning materials emerge. The discussion considers how this curated library of valuable performance documents creates an "accidental archive." Notwithstanding the challenges of making materials "open," often connected to institutional gatekeeping, this short paper poses questions about the documenting of …

Reflective Documentation As A Movement Potential: Two Digital Platforms Building A Professional Learning Community, John Taylor, Defne Erdur

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Creating dance and training dancers is a collaborative and co-creative process, and teaching has a central role in the co-creative artistic processes. Yet dance teachers, whether free-lance or working in an institution, often develop and maintain their physical teaching practice in isolation. Additionally, because of the ephemeral nature of dance and the relational nature of dance education, these practices usually do not end up being recorded or documented as a body of knowledge. In the face of such a reality the online database IDOCDE.net provides a platform for the development and maintenance of an inclusive professional learning community through a …

The Life Of A Dance: Double Take Part Ii, Gregory C. Sporton

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The documentation of dance regularly asserts a false concept. This is that dances can be fixed, like a text, script, painting or even a musical score. Dance academics and organizations like ballet companies and the trusts that claim to protect and preserve the heritage of specific choreographers protect this idea. Focused far more on outputs than production, they decontextualize dance by ignoring its context: the working process. Notwithstanding the problematics of this assumption about the archival form of such material, that the tokens of the types that Wollheim (1968) posits as necessary are simply too flexible to be captured as …

Black Box, White Cube, Gray Zone: Dance Exhibitions And Audience Attention, Claire Bishop

Publications and Research

Relocated from the “black box” of experimental theatre to the “white cube” of the gallery, dance in the museum brings about new forms of performance — the dance exhibition — and new protocols of audience behavior that permit, even encourage, smartphone photography. This is the “gray zone” of recent performance, which is both a symptom of, and compensation for, the virtualization of contemporary perception.

Redefining The Competitive Dance Indsutry: A Plan For The Dance Competitions Of Tomorrow, Stevie Mack

Honors College Theses

There is an absence of direct focus in the development of a dancer’s education within today’s competitive dance world, as current dance competitions have many holes in providing the proper training and education a young dancer needs. It is clear that dance competitions are for-profit businesses with a focus on making money, but it is time to turn these businesses into opportunities for growth, success, and a place where pure talent can be discovered and then launched into the next generation of professional dancers.

I am a strong believer in education. Therefore, I believe competitive dance should be another form …

American Tap Dance History And Proposed Preservation, Margaret Miller

Honors College Theses

The first form of dance conceived in the United States, tap dance, thrived throughout the era of vaudeville and the movie musical. Today’s society often overlooks tap dance beyond basic or beginner dance education; the history of the art from is even more so neglected. Within these pages, I will address the question of how the history of tap dance can be honored and preserved for generations to come. I feel so grateful to have had a tap mentor that valued the history of tap just as much as the technique and steps. Others in my field may not have …

Flying Closer: The Intersection Of Circus And Dance, Emma Thomas

Honors College Theses

Dancers entering the professional industry must consider whether to be a jack of all trades, able to perform any style and any skill, or a specialized performer who has achieved mastery of one specific technique. Because commercial dancers require a greater variety of skill sets, and jobs for commercial dancers such as cruise ships, backup dancing, and Broadway shows, are increasingly asking their dancers to perform aerial arts - and circus companies such as Cirque Du Soleil, and Circa are blending circus and dance, I am arguing that a dancer entering the commercial industry has to also consider the value …

Rehearsal Injuries In Soft-Soled Character Shoes: Injury Rate Of Female Collegiate Dancers Wearing Soft-Soled Character Shoes With 2.5 Or 3.0 Inch Heels In Musical Theatre Rehearsals, Evelyn Vaughan

Honors College Theses

High-heeled shoes (HHS) have been known to present biomechanical imbalances in lower-leg mechanics at the pedestrian level, but have not been thoroughly studied in the context of highly dynamic movement, such as dance. In order to analyze the effects of 2.5-inch and 3.0-inch soft-soled character shoes (CS) worn by female collegiate musical theatre dancers during rehearsals, selected subjects completed a written questionnaire, the star balance excursion test, and a heel raise test. It was predicted that both heel heights would promote irregularities in subjects’ sense of balance and lower leg stamina, while 3.0 inch CS would cause greater rates of …

Bringing Life To Theatre: A Scenic Designer's Role In Creating "The Wild Party", Matthew Carlin

Honors College Theses

The purpose of this paper is to examine the research that goes into designing the scenic elements of a musical. I was the scenic designer for Pace School of Performing Arts’ production of Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe’s The Wild Party in the fall of 2017. Directed by Roger Ellis, our version of the vaudeville-style musical was done in an immersive, in-the-round style. As the scenic designer for this production I was strongly focused on the research aspect of the design process. We consulted several art movements and architectural styles, as well as mythology, film and literature in …

Establishing Cultural Identity In American Concert Dance: How Corporate Funding Can Revitalize The World Of Dance, Taylor Rosenberger

Honors College Theses

In a country that has rapidly evolved in many industries, it has always mystified me as to why advancement in the arts, specifically dance, has lagged behind. My hypothesis as to why this is occurring is that concert dance in America is not as synonymous to the cultural identity of the nation as it is in comparison to its European ancestors. I began my research with the creation of ballet in order to determine the cultural roots that were established within particular societies. I then compared the funding models between the nations with this deep attachment to the funding models …

Introduction To “The Movement's Voice", David Callaghan, Ann M. Shanahan

Department of Fine & Performing Arts: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Self-Generated Notations: A Suggested Methodology Of Introducing Movement Literacy, ‪Shlomit Ofer‬‏

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

The purpose of this paper is to present a method aimed at enabling the acquisition of movement literacy in a communicative-creative manner that does not require long-term expertise. The paper opens with a brief history and description of Eshkol Wachman Movement Notation (EWMN), followed by a discussion of the notion of Movement Literacy and its defined components–conceptualization, representation and kinesthetic performance, as have emerged within the EWMN system. Two additional educational ideas are also mentioned–the constructionism and the independent development of visual representations by learners. Together, these ideas establish a theoretical background for a non-formal study, in which dance-teaching students …

New Identities New Voices: Introducing The Choreographer-Notator, Beth Megill

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

In this practitioner’s perspective paper, the author discusses an experience in which she notated a piece of her choreography using a combination of Labanotation and Motif Notation with the intent of setting the repertory from the score on a group of contemporary dancers, who had never read notation before. She explains her goals as a choreographer and notator proposing a fused creative identity, the Choreographer-Notator. This paper describes how the process of drafting the score and then teaching from the score provided new insights into her work and her identity as a dance artist. The paper concludes with the demands …

Writing Dance: Reflexive Processes-At-Work Notating New Choreography, Valarie Williams

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

The experiences of the notator-at-work are a continuous learning event based on personal discovery, reflection, and trial and error. When in the process of notating a newly created work notators often become engaged with the dance on a unique level compared to the times when they are notating works already in existence. This article examines the notator experience alongside the choreographic process of Bebe Miller, from a case study perspective. Using one instance of Miller’s choreographing Prey (2000) and the notator’s documentation of Miller’s dance, the side by side collaborative processes of the notator-at-work and choreographer-at-work are examined providing a …

Processing Emotional Expression In The Dance Of A Foreign Culture: Gestural Responses Of Germans And Koreans To Ballet And Korean Dance, Zi Hyun Kim, Hedda Lausberg

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

Artistic dance differs between cultures with regard to the formal movement repertoire and methods to represent dancer's emotions. The present study explores how differently the spectators perceive the dance scenes of their own and foreign cultures. We showed German and Korean participants sad and happy dance scenes of the French ballet Giselle and Korean dance Sung-Mu. To learn the perceived thoughts and feelings of the participant from the dance scenes, we analyzed the frequency of their hand movements and gestures, which were accompanied by verbal descriptions of the participant's appreciation immediately after observation of the dance stimuli. The videotaped …

Notating Dances From Films: A Method In Hungarian Ethnochoreology, János Fügedi

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

Achievements of Hungarian ethnochoreology are due in large part to results of processing fieldwork data primarily using dances captured on films. Hungarian dance researchers historically have focused on notation as the primary tool for conducting analysis of traditional Hungarian dances. After a short review of how Laban’s kinetography achieved the status of the appreciated tool in the Hungarian dance research methodology, the author details the advantages of notating dances from films, but also the possible obstacles to which the notator may face when the only means of movement information is the moving picture. Best practices for doing notation analysis from …

The Creation Of Traditional African Dance/Music Integrated Scores, Doris Green

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

African dances are among the oldest dance traditions in existence; their structure is uniquely different because the movement therein is inseparable from the music that governs the movements. The music is associated with the spoken language of the people, which makes it virtually impossible for outsiders to comprehend the music of different African countries. In Africa there is no dance that is not accompanied by some form of music from the voice to orchestras of different percussive instruments. For centuries the dance/music of African people has been passed between generations by a mouth to ear process. Any society that is …

Voices Of Notators: Approaches To Writing A Score--Special Issue, Teresa L. Heiland

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

In this special issue of Voices of Notators: Approaches to Writing a Score, eight authors share their unique process of creating and implementing their approach to notating movement, and they describe how that process transforms them as researchers, analysts, dancers, choreographers, communicators, and teachers. These researchers discuss the need to capture, to form, to generate, and to communicate ideas using a written form of dance notation so that some past, present, or future experience can be better understood, directed, informed, and shared. They are organized roughly into themes motivated by relationships between them and their methodological similarities and differences. …

Oklahoma!, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2018 Summer Theatre

Rodgers & Hammerstein's first collaboration remains, in many ways, their most innovative, having set the standards and established the rules of musical theatre still being followed today. Set in a Western Indian territory just after the turn of the century, the high-spirited rivalry between the local farmers and cowboys provides the colorful background against which Curly, a handsome cowboy, and Laurey, a winsome farm girl, play out their love story. Although the road to true love never runs smooth, with these two headstrong romantics holding the reins, love's journey is as bumpy as a surrey ride down a country road. …

Women On The Floor: A Study Of Feminism In Modern Dance History, Hannah Mccarthy

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Modern dance evolves everyday with new movement ideas, styles, and teachings. Not only can modern dance be new and innovative, but it can also be a mirror reflection of the current time period. It is an art form often used to make a social statement. It can become a discussion of the past, present, or future. Modern dance informs its audience through an intent chosen by the choreographer or dancers. The intent varies depending on time, space, emotion, and myriad other conditions. My studies will examine how the different periods of modern dance aligned with the waves of the feminist …

Storytelling Through Movement: An Analysis Of The Connections Between Dance & Literature, Zoe Hester

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Movement and storytelling are the links between past and present; both dance and literature have the same artistic and primal origins. We began to dance to express and communicate, to worship and feel. We tell stories for the same reasons: to learn from the past and to be able to communicate in the present.

This work explores the many connections between literature and dance through examinations of six dance forms: Native American, Bharatanatyam, West African, Ballet, Modern, and Post-Modern dance.

Art Infested Water, May 2018, Nova Southeastern University Department Of Performing And Visual Arts

Department of Performing and Visual Arts Newsletters

No abstract provided.