Theatre and Performance Studies Commons^™

Permission To Perform: A Waltz With Zelda, Sarah E. Smith

LSU Master's Theses

This paper discusses an artistic journey of creating a one-woman show. It is the purpose of Sarah E. Smith, creator and performer, to marry private human experience to public theatrical expression. In this project, Smith is experimenting with character development generated by abstract, physical, absurd, and unconventional explorations. This exploration will create a distance from the literal translation of the story and will allow the audience to gain a better perspective of the character and her dilemma. It is the intention of the creator to make the action and need of the character more visceral, immediate and striking by expanding …

Fall Dance Concert (November 8-10, 2018), Lindenwood University

Student Dance Programs & Brochures

No abstract provided.

The Roads Are Bumpy Ones: A Study Of Body Image Through Abstract Performance, Alexis Goldstein

Theses and Dissertations

An overwhelming number of contemporary adolescents struggle with difficult issues. Many of these problems are socially related whereas others can be directly related to the degradation of the family unit. Among the most damaging of issues is distorted body image, which infect youth, often causing them to communicate aggressively, and even landing them in compromising situations. I have sought to challenge my students to redefine themselves through expressive movement and the creation of abstract rhythmic sounds. In teaching these techniques, I have given my former students the means to combat negative thoughts and actions, as well as an excellent tool …

Making Connections: Improving Movement Skills By Integrating Knowledge From Dance Disciplines, Amy D. Howton

Faculty Articles

Dance specialist Rebecca Enghauser (2003) has emphasized that, in the dance class, motor learning begins when the student replicates the movements presented. Demonstration is usually a necessary accompaniment to verbal instructions, suggesting that dancers routinely engage in multiple learning styles, including visual, auditor/, and kinesthetic. Enghauser also addressed "random practice," where movement appears in different combinations that then produce better and longer-lasting skill learning. Therefore, relating similar movement from different disciplines should help produce long-term learning. The analysis required when processing these similar, although perhaps outwardly different, movements provides additional and more enduring learning opportunities. Enghauser also addressed "random practice," …

Weaving Through Reality: Dance As An Active Emblem Of Fantasy In Performance Literature, Tara Maylyn Frankel

CMC Senior Theses

Literature uses dance to reveal underlying messages of fantasy through the themes of the central narrative of female characters. Examining the original texts with respect to their varying adaptations for film and stage, performance literature reveals how directors relate a three-dimensional story to an audience from a two-dimensional world. Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Red Shoes” shows an underlying semiotic code where transitioning from the black and white of reality to the red of fantasy is only accomplished through dancing. Oscar Wilde’s Salome displays an eroticization of the exotic solo-improvised dance that provides a semblance of control for the main character. …

A Lighting And Scenic Design For The University Of Central Florida's A Symphony Of Dance, Terra Baldwin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The beginnings of modern stage lighting emerged during the late 1800s when Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig theorized about the potential use of lighting to create plasticity in a theatrical production. Appia and Craig conducted experiments, only to find that the limitation of the instruments available at the time prevented the achievement of their theory. The next documented step was when Stanley McCandless proposed and published a system for implementing the Appia and Craig theory of plasticity. Stanley McCandless' lighting textbook, A Syllabus of Stage Lighting. The book broke down the elements and function of light; ultimately becoming the …

The Secret Garden

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s Fall 2009 performance of The Secret Garden based on the book by Frances Hodgson Burnett with script and lyrics by Marsha Norman and music by Lucy Simon.

The Secret Garden tells the story of Mary Lennox, a young English girl from British Raj who is sent to live in Yorkshire, England with her relatives after her parents die in a cholera outbreak. As she works in a neglected hidden garden with a young gardener she begins to grow and begins to influence her sickly cousin and uncle.

In Passing, Julia Allisson Cost

Scripps Senior Theses

My intentions for "In Passing" were to build the beginnings of an education philosophy through a richly varied choreographic process. I wanted my dancers to come away from this work with a heightened eagerness to explore the unfamiliar and an increased confidence in their ability to support one another and be supported, and I wanted to learn to more effectively and tenderly lead a group of many different personalities through a long-term creative experience. I think we have been successful.

Dreaming In Motion: Maintaining Community, Culture And Identity Of First Australians, Ian R.T. Colless

Theses : Honours

No abstract provided.

Dancescape: A Work In Thetranslation Of Bodies And Movement, Julia Allisson Cost

Scripps Senior Theses

Translation is inevitably challenging work. When the human body and its movement are the subjects translated, the work may be particularly difficult, as questions both technical and ethical may arise about the representation in the second medium. Yet the exercise can also be very illuminating, creating space for insights that may not have been possible without the translation. For my Scripps College art thesis, I have created a series of paintings of Western dancers and researched four artists whose work involves bodies, movement, or dance and whose approaches differ tremendously. These artists are Edgar Degas (1834-1917), an impressionist painter known …

Review: Dancing From Past To Present: Nation, Culture, Identities (Madison, 2006); Dance And Society: Dancer As A Cultural Performer. Re-Appraising Our Past, Moving Into The Future (Budapest, 2005), Anthony Shay

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

The large international participation of scholars, many of them young graduate students, in the recent CND/CORD/SDHS conference in Paris (June 21-27, 2007), along with new publications in the field and the spread of world dance courses in colleges and universities in many regions of the world, suggest the need for increasingly sophisticated research publications. New publications featuring the works of well-known senior scholars are cause for celebration by those of us attempting to meet research and student demand for new sources of information that feature new conceptual, theoretical, and methodological approaches. In the past few years scholars have produced an …

Dance Concert 2008: Gotta Dance!, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2007-2008 Season

No abstract provided.

Choreographing The Other: The Serbian State Folk Dance Ensemble, Gypsies, Muslims And Albanians, Anthony Shay

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

I argue that the power to represent is not only power in a theoretical Foucauldian sense, but the power of representation, especially of those powerless to resist the field of representation provided by state-supported national dance ensembles, is a very real power. Dance scholars have begun to look at issues of representation and dance and human rights within fascist and communist contexts of the past, as well as questioning the stances toward dance taken by theocratic regimes like that of the Islamic Republic and Iran and the former Taliban regime of Afghanistan. I also suggest that the actual content of …

Dance And Human Rights In The Middle East, North Africa, And Central Asia, Anthony Shay

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

In this essay, Islam itself is first examined in order to determine how individual Muslims justify to themselves and to others the banning of dancing in various contexts. Following a brief discussion of Islam as it relates to dance, some of the myriad dance genres and contexts found in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia are discussed. Finally, I consider the many ways in which many Muslims perceive dance, and then describe and analyze the local reactions to dancing in its complexity. This approach elucidates multiple meanings that create a pattern of behavior within specific cultural contexts.

Choreographing Cabaret: A Guide To Storytelling Through Dance And Movement, Katie Claire Bradley

Theses and Dissertations

American Musical Theatre is one of the unique American methods of storytelling that exists in performance. In a musical, text, song, movement, and dance tell a story. In Music Theatre, when a character can no longer express what they desire in words, they sing. If singing cannot satisfy the need, the element of dance comes into play. Richard Kislan states, "What sets dance apart is the universality in movement and gesture which is not bound like language to nationality or culture. Dance transcends geography in a way that language cannot. Dance humanizes expression in a way that music cannot."(237) In …

Dance 2007: Encore!, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2006-2007 Season

No abstract provided.

Primordial Prophecy: Mingling The Basic Traits Of Theater, Modern Dance, Ballet, And Folk Dance To Create A Diversified Performance, Luana Ely

Theses

No abstract provided.

Can A Methodology Be Developed For Musical Theatre Choreography?, Kathleen Kelly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Limited training exists for young, aspiring choreographers who wish to work in the realm of musical theatre. University programs turn you away if your focus is not on concert dance and few good books can be found on library shelves to gain knowledge. Most books that do exist are very outdated and lack the practical knowledge and information necessary to become a successful musical theatre choreographer today. This research will help to determine whether a methodology can be developed for training musical theatre choreographers. The research data collected stems from the creative minds of choreographers and performers. A select group …

Dancing Through Film Musicals: Narratives In Motion, Dara Phillips

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to discover if and how dance communicates vital plot and character information nonverbally. The example analyzed was the film Singin’ in the Rain. This thesis examined the six dance sequences in the film to determine if the dancing is an integral, powerful, and significant communicative addition to the film. Walter Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm was used in conjunction with Seymour Chatman’s concept of kernels and satellites to determine if the dances communicated significantly to the film’s viewers. The Narrative Paradigm, though loosely framed, provided the concepts of coherence and fidelity. These concepts helped determine if …

Dance 2006: Street Fest, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2005-2006 Season

No abstract provided.

Reviews: “Performance And Evolution In The Age Of Darwinism,” “Dancing At The Dawn Of Agriculture,” “Dance In Anthropology (2nd Edition),” “Dances Of The Tewa Pueblo Indians (2nd Edition)", Anthony Shay

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

In order to create a contextual basis for a discussion of these four titles, I connect them through the authors’ uses of anthropological and archaeological methods and theories, and discuss how these have changed through time.

Dance Concert 2004: Broadway Babies, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

2003-2004 Season

No abstract provided.

Time Wounds All Heels: Duncan, Ballet, And Bataille, Joanne Pearson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Any study of the birth of modern dance draws upon the work of Isadora Duncan and for too long her dance has been placed in opposition to ballet. Even today the contemporary Duncan dancer reifies the image of Duncan as natural, harmonious, unique and rounded [1]. This opposition of free dance versus ballet presents a two-dimensional portrait of past representations of femininity. I aim to re-think Duncan's disdain for the pointe shoe and her belief that barefoot dancing would encourage a liberated movement that would in turn free woman from her disgraceful position in dance and …

Combat Dance:A Creatively Holistic Approach To Movement Performance Art, Raymont Lee Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

"Combat Dance" is an eclectic blend of combat and dance art forms combined and taught from the Fall 2001 to Spring 2003. As defined here, combat dance is a blend of techniques and principles gleaned from both unarmed and armed aspects of stage combat, martial arts (such as aikido and kung fu), modern dance and other expressive movements used to tell a story of conflict. Its primary purpose is to provide both actors and non-actors greater awareness and control of their bodies and to provide a range of creative avenues of expression. Combat dance gives the performers a unique and …

Dancing For The Actor: A Proposal For Actor Training, Anne Marie Gay-Baradic

Theses

Many college and universities across the United States offer programs in theater and dance. Training often exists to facilitate the actor or the dancer in becoming separate participants in a similar art. For the college actor, movement training typically incorporates traditional approaches as developed by Matthias Alexander, Tadashi Suzuki, or Sanford Meisener. Although these lessons in movement training hold merit, alternative strategies exist. The development of the Dancing/or the Actor program utilizes the principles of dance as the primary tools in actor movement training. By experiencing the components, theories, and techniques of dance, the college actor will focus on physical …

Peter Pan

Taylor Theatre Playbills

The playbill for Taylor University’s Spring 2002 performance of Peter Pan based on the play by J. M. Barrie with music by Jule Styne, Mark Charlap, and Trude Rittmann, and lyrics by Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Carolyn Leigh.

Peter Pan tells the story of the Darling children, Wendy, John, and Michael, and their adventures with Peter Pan, the boy who never grows older and lives in the fantastical land of Neverland.

Spreading The Net, Anthony Shay

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

The ballet and modern dance establishment has a stranglehold on dance programs throughout North America. Dance ethnology, with one or two exceptions, takes a back seat to the study of Western theater dance forms and its major figures. Individuals highly trained in dance ethnology have a difficult time accumulating sufficient "cultural capital," in Bourdieu's terms, to secure meaningful positions. As a consequence, we must "spread our nets" in order that our research and writings become more relevant outside the dance field. Dance ethnologists are uniquely poised to respond to the strong emphasis on popular culture that currently characterizes the social …

Accumulated Response In Live Improvised Dance Performance, Joanna T. Pollitt

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The response project and accompanying thesis aim to affirm the role of the dancer as an authority in revealing patterns and traces of accumulated lived experience, knowledge and ideas through the practice and performance of dance improvisation. The dancing body is investigated as a dynamical and complex system of research that is embedded in a process of continual response to the present. These bodily inscriptions and the process of active response form the seminal grounds for the physical and energetic exchange of improvised dance in performance.

Dance And Doctrine: Shaker And Mormon Dancing As A Manifestation Of Doctrinal Views Of The Physical Body, Lindsy Stewart Cieslewicz

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis compares the dancing of the Shakers (The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearance) and the Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or LDS Church) during the nineteenth century, as it was influenced by their doctrinal beliefs about the human body. Specifically, it examines how the role of the physical body in achieving mortal happiness and immortal salvation was viewed by each group and how these beliefs were reflected in their dancing. It describes the different forms of dancing performed by each religious group and how dance functioned as worship and recreation for the …

Marta Rohatynskyj's Review Of Advertising Missionaries And Pacific Passages, Marta Rohatynskyj

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.