Dance Commons^™

Women Of The Dalit Unrest: Rewriting Bodies, Reinforcing Resistance, Suddhadeep Mukherjee

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

The paper aims to take the scholarship on corporeal feminism and Dalit Studies forward by focusing on the Dalit woman’s body. The body is not treated as an inert surface in this paper but is considered as a transformative medium that can alter its embedded codifications and significations through transgressive performances in the face of systemic and systematized caste violence. In doing so the gendered body not only challenges to rewrite the Dalit epistemology from the vantage of resistance but also initiates a rethinking of Indian feminism. The paper begins with a discursive discussion on the importance of the gender …

Fashioning The Flapper: Clothing As A Catalyst For Social Change In 1920s America, Julia Wolffe

Honors Program Theses

Fashion has been a catalyst for social change throughout human history. Fashion in 1920s America in particular reflects society's rapidly evolving attitudes towards gender and race. Beginning with how corsetry heavily restricted women for nearly four hundred years up until the twentieth century, this thesis explores how clothing has acted as a tool for societal progression following World War I and Women's Suffrage and during the Jazz Age and The Harlem Renaissance. Specifically, this thesis examines how the influence of jazz music and dance that originated from Black American communities led to the creation of the flapper evening dress. The …

A Dancer's Image, Sydney Baker

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Dancers are amazingly dedicated athletes who train for hours a day to try and perfect their craft. In doing so, they can become hyper focused on the details, picking apart every aspect of themselves and their technique. With so much time spent training, it can be difficult to take a step back and analyze the role the mirror plays in a dancer’s training and everyday life. There are many factors that can affect a dancer's body image, including the social environment between educators and peers, social standards and social media, dance clothing, and so much more. This report and creative …

A Renaissance: The Absurd Retelling Of Mostly True Events, Erica R. Hitzman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Throughout the following you will be taken on a fantastical retelling of the exhibition A Renaissance, and some of what lead up to it. Through the eyes of various shifting perspectives you will explore the relationships between the artist, her art, and the viewer in the hopes of unveiling how the work plays into feminist theory, its place in the Zeitgeist, and the motivations behind it. Each perspective is formatted differently, to visually mirror the shift in perspective. Presented in the first person and aligned to the right, the account of the artist discusses the process, emotion, and inspiration behind …

Perceptions Of Strength Training For Dancers At A Midwestern University, Abigail Boenig-Dombek

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of the research is to gain a deeper insight into the perceptions of strength training within the dance community. The research aimed to receive feedback from individuals over the age of 18 who are currently studying, practicing, or teaching dance. METHODS: The survey utilized was replicated among a convenience sample of adult dancers associated with The University of Akron’s dance program from the research of Farmer and Brouner (2021) in their scholarly article, “Perceptions of Strength Training in Dance.” The survey contained 14 questions requiring the individual to assess their personal involvement in strength training. The questions were …

Beginnings, Elizabeth Becker

Dance (MFA) Theses

Researcher Elizabeth Becker uses personal experiences of pregnancy alongside scholarly research on the developmental movement patterns of the human embryo, fetus, and newborn’s first year of life to explore the multiplicity of these movement patterns within and outside the womb. Becker explores the relationship between the fertilization, germinal, embryonic, and fetal stages in relation to a newborn and its mother. These movement patterns within the beginning stages of life are valuable to research because they simulate neurodevelopmental patterns, which help wire the central nervous system in early childhood. These movements also help lay the foundation for sensory-motor development and life-long …

Trauma-Informed Performance Art Education, Yvonne Houy, Kymberly Mellen, Alethea Inns, Morgan Iommi

Creative Collaborations

Trauma is the emotional response to a disturbing event or series of events, and can cause symptoms such as unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, headaches, and nausea, according to the American Psychological Association (2022). Learning activities in the performing arts - such as adjusting the body through touch, or the emotional content of scenes - can retraumatize students unintentionally. In contrast, creating the conditions for emotional states that enhance learning is a science, and an art, that can support conditions for optimal performance including Flow states

Performing arts educators can proactively support students and performances by becoming trauma-informed and actively using intimacy …

Deaf Inclusion And Accessibility In The Dance Field, Samantha M. Doyle, Caroline S. Clark

Symposium of Student Scholars

Over the past ten years, the dance field in the United States has shifted towards practicing diversity and inclusion. However, there are still underrepresented groups in dance, such as the Deaf community. There is a current lack of pedagogical content to help dance teachers and choreographers be inclusive to Deaf dancers. This research addresses the gap by discussing issues and access for Deaf and hard-of-hearing (HOH) dancers in the dance classroom and on stage. To do so, I present a literature review and analysis of current scholarship with a goal of bringing awareness to the current lack of accessibility to …

Kinetic Meditative Experimental Drawing, Julie Lord, Elizabeth Adams Thomas, Chai Avery

P-12 Lesson Plans

This lesson for high school students provides an opportunity to make a work of art without a preconceived plan by using their bodies and spontaneous movements to control mark-making. Symmetry is explored along with the art of Heather Hansen and Tony Orrico.

Stories From Home: Yvonne Montoya And Shannon Parrales In Conversation, Yvonne Montoya

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of New Mexico and the Greater Southwest

In this conversation, New Mexican contemporary dance artists Yvonne Montoya and Shannon Parrales discuss their dance journeys and their work on Montoya’s current projects: Stories from Home and Stories from Home: COVID-19 Addendum.

Be Coming - Transcendence Born From The Concrete, Kathryn Alter

Theses and Dissertations

My interactive virtual world, be coming, is a response to the question, “what happens when art that is made to be performed cannot be shared in a live performance?” In answering this question, I also use as theoretical tools certain works of Benjamin, Deleuze, Guattari and Peter Zumthor.

Us, Abundantly: From Africa To The Americas, Karisma Jay

Theses and Dissertations

"Us, AbunDantly," a Live theatrical dance performance and film, delves into the African Diaspora and its influences. An artistic and academic project built upon the amplification of Black excellence and Black pride, this paper contextualizes a work within the oral histories and contemporary dance studies of a powerfully ancestral community.

Kinesthetic Language: A Dialect Of Kinesics, Terrill Suzanne Corletto

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Human communication requires the disciplines regarding physical fitness, codified language, and the performing arts to overlap, and exist symbiotically. Within the realm of artistic performance, the three disciplines working together deliver a deliberate message in a way unique to performing artists. The general tendency to compartmentalize sports, communication, and the performing arts into their pigeonhole categories of Kinesiology, Linguistics, and Theatre Arts is impractical, particularly for performing artists simply because all of the disciplines are mutually dependent in the context of all kinesthetic communications.

The purpose of this paper is to define and discuss several concepts and the ways in …

The Freedom To Move: Dance/Movement Therapy And Survivors Of Trafficking - An Evolving Practice, Rebecca Richardson

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Abstract

Human/Sex trafficking is the use of force or coercion for the purpose of exploiting humans (mainly women) for sex or labor. Consequences of being trafficked include psychological and physical symptoms that may hinder the survivors for the rest of their life if not treated. Survivors of human trafficking are infrequently researched and have limited evidence-based methods of treatment. Even fewer studies have been conducted involving the use of dance/movement therapy with survivors of trafficking. dance/movement therapy is vital to treatment because of its focus on integrating the body with the mind. In this literature review I discuss the effects …

Hysteria, Fear, And/Or Delight, Alessandra Ferrari-Wong

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My Bachelor of Fine Arts thesis statement, Hysteria, Fear, and/or Delight, establishes the forms and concepts of my art practice as it stands as of May, 2020: performance-based and interdisciplinary. My practice implies narrative while acknowledging the audience. Physical language, in both dance and gesture, can be a means of communication or subversion. Pieces exist as ephemeral, often private, performances and then separately in archival forms ranging from video, to photography, to installation. The body of the statement details my thesis project, a remaking of Giselle, a 19th century Romantic-era ballet, into a performance series and video trilogy. …

Basics Of Stepping Club, Hana Pham, Yara Madit

Honors Program: Expanded Learning Clubs

Originating in West Africa in the 1500s, step has since evolved into a form of dancing that places emphasis on rhythmic movements and high energy. It is commonly used amongst greek organizations and within schools. This club introduces stepping to older children through activities such as stamina, focus, teamwork, and problem solving.

Pantomime: The History And Metamorphosis Of A Theatrical Ideology, Karl E. Toepfer

Open Educational Resources

This book offers perhaps the most comprehensive history of pantomime ever written. No other book so thoroughly examines the varieties of pantomimic performance from the early Roman Empire, when the term “pantomime” came into use, until the present. After thoroughly examining the complexities and startlingly imaginative performance strategies of Roman pantomime, the author identifies the peculiar political circumstances that revived and shaped pantomime in France and Austria in the eighteenth century, leading to the Pierrot obsession in the nineteenth century. Modernist aesthetics awakened a huge, highly diverse fascination with pantomime. The book explores an extraordinary variety of modernist and postmodern …

Embodied Nostalgia: Early Twentieth Century Social Dance And U.S. Musical Theatre, Phoebe Rumsey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I claim the collective emotional connections and historical explorations characteristic of musical theatre constitute a nostalgic impulse dramaturgically inherent in the form. In my intervention in the link between nostalgia and musical theatre, I look to an area underrepresented in musical theatre scholarship: social dance. Through case studies that focus specifically on how social dance in musical theatre brings forth the dancer on stage as a site of embodied history, cultural memory, and nostalgia, I ask what social dance is doing in musical theatre and how the dancing body functions as a catalyst for nostalgic thinking for …

Dance Of Exile: The Sakharoffs’ Visual Performances In Montevideo (1935–1948), Pablo Munoz Ponzo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the life-work chronology of the dancers and choreographers Clotilde von Derp (whose surname then was Sakharoff) and Alexander Sakharoff, who were exiled in Montevideo, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, between 1941 and 1948. During their stay in the Rio de la Plata region, the Sakharoffs stirred up the art scene by performing extremely detailed dances with great attention to costume design. This thesis begins with a review of the reception of the dancers’ performances by the artistic and cultural circles in Montevideo, arguing that the Sakharoffs’ “queer” trajectory resonated with the Uruguayan artistic community, influencing the creation …

All Signs Point To Profitability, Hannah Bender

Marriott Student Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Sea Squad, Liam Geary Baulch

The Goose

The Sea Squad is a band of cheerleaders against climate change. Taking action as a team in formation, they gather momentum, inviting all people to cheer with them, mimicking the infinitely expandable nature of the seas' molecular structure. The work was developed and performed as a bilingual project at Est-Nord-Est in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec, Canada, and has since been performed and exhibited internationally. The following poems are some of the chants that Sea Squad use to get a crowd cheering together against climate change.

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

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

No abstract provided.

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

Department of Performing and Visual Arts Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Childhood Development: How The Fine And Performing Arts Enhance Neurological, Social, And Academic Traits, Katherine Rowe

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract

Childhood development has always been a major topic when studying psychology and biology. This makes sense because the brain develops from the time a child is conceived to the time that child has reached around the age of twenty-seven. Doctors, psychologists, and sociologists look at numerous things when studying childhood development. However, how common is it for researchers to study how the fine and performing arts affect childhood development? Sociologists tend to be extremely open and mindful of all aspects of things such as culture, sexuality, religion, and even age. By taking a sociological standpoint when studying the arts …

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.

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

Department of Performing and Visual Arts Newsletters

No abstract provided.

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

Department of Performing and Visual Arts Newsletters

No abstract provided.

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

Department of Performing and Visual Arts Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Art Infested Water, December 2017 - January 2018, Nova Southeastern University Department Of Performing And Visual Arts

Department of Performing and Visual Arts Newsletters

No abstract provided.