Dance Commons^™

Dancing Through Loss, Tracy Vogt

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis project aims to examine and interrogate the embodiment of grief through the comparison of western concert dance works choreographed by Antony Tudor, Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, Bill T. Jones, Anna Halprin, and Camille A. Brown. This research will culminate in a choreographic work reflecting and responding to my own personal journey with grief and loss while also incorporating and integrating the process of the choreographers studied.

#Iykyk: Tiktok As A Subversive Space: Democratizing Dance And Shifting Artistic Paradigms, Meagan Dodini

Dance (MFA) Theses

The emergence of TikTok as a platform for dance content has revolutionized the dance industry providing new avenues for exposure, creativity, and self-promotion. Researcher Meg Dodini explores the impact of TikTok on the institution of dance, investigating opportunities for increased visibility, collaboration, and brand sponsorships. Moreover, TikTok has facilitated the creation of new dance styles and trends, fostering collaboration between artists and engagement with the viewer. It is important to acknowledge the drawbacks of TikTok's influence. This research or thesis aims to explore the potential biases surrounding the expectations of dance regarding appearance, spaces, and performance. It argues that TikTok …

Erosion: Landscape Reveals Us, John Alexander Mcbride

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis explores the connective tissue between the land on which we stand and the body we inhabit. Through the lens of climate change and erosion, this research unveils the lasting effects of severe and traumatic weather patterns on the psychology and physiology of those who continue to endure them. How bodies (capitalistic bodies, collective bodies, and our personal bodies) treat the land and each other affects us all—we are all part of the eroding ecosystem, linked together by the soil beneath our feet. The soil that has been scorched and stolen, mined and massacred. The soil that is fertile …

Queering Empathy, Robert Wesner

Dance (MFA) Theses

This research is an exploration of personal utopia by locating oneself within the worlds of dance and dance studies, deconstructing past lived experiences where queer futurity presents itself, and connecting them with present and future realities. The critical research manifests within a practice of reconstructing a non-linear understanding of one’s personhood. Creating artwork and sculpture, songwriting, editing dance and dance on film, and exploring the self as a partner of each medium reveals a greater sense of physical, emotional, and social structures that allow, inhibit, or deny one their place historically. Investigating one’s agency and personal autonomy, and the lack …

Breaking Barriers: Creating Inclusive Dance Spaces For High School Students With Cerebral Palsy, Samantha Michelle Barnewolt

Dance (MFA) Theses

Abstract This thesis explores the power of positive mindsets as it relates to creative movement development in dance for students living with Cerebral Palsy (CP) who also use motorized wheelchairs. This research dives into the development of movement mantras used to break negative mindsets and create thinking strategies that encourage movement development for varied bodies. As a result of collaborative efforts between the researcher, a student living with CP, and students living without CP, this study reveals that through the removal of mental barriers which complicate the accessibility of intentional movement in dance, students with CP may overcome obstacles that …

Honor Thyself, Alonzo O. Williams

Dance (MFA) Theses

The black male experience and identity in America are filled with complexity. We struggle to know ourselves. We work to see the way of love and the peace of an unviolated free spirit. We want to engage with ourselves with the highest degree of freedom and comfort, not to continue to question our identity in a life-threatening white patriarchal masculinity ideal. Honoring oneself from the lenses of the Reconstruction era of the United States is essential. Reconceptualizing this history explores the significance of emphasizing Reconstruction in my life as a black male to go through a process of self-discovery and …

Traces: Embodied Ephemera From Here To There, Alice Svetic

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis work explores contemporary queer dance making through the concept of ephemera - what is left after performances "end." Taking heavy inspiration from José Esteban Muñoz's Cruising Utopia: the then and there of queer futurity, the research situates one young queer dance maker’s own past, present, and future choreographies as a site for the extraction of queer embodied experience. The textual and written research culminates in a gallery installation which houses a series of vignettes that act as preserved documents of these queer performance histories. The live performance calls the alive, dancing body into the conversation of the ephemeral. …

Healing Through Mother Earth, Taylor A. Russell

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis deals with mental health, with a focus on Black women. Historically, Black women are often so compromised, being constant caregivers and helping everyone else, that they forget to help themselves, not having the time and financial means to do so. If we go back in the time of slavery, many Black women were taking care of slave owners' children and suckling the white women’s babies instead of their own. By the time they got home and after diligently caring for other people’s children they were focused on their own children, who they had been away from for hours …

The Means To Escape, Devonn Mckenna

Dance (MFA) Theses

This research interrogates what it means to utilize escapism, transforming it from passive to active consumption, drawing strong ties between performance and social media. Through audience awareness and participation, this research aims to cultivate a social collective within performance viewing and social media. Framing escapism as a social collective experience resists contemporary notions suggesting that escapism is an individual experience. This work argues that social media and performance have become a space allowing for social collective awareness. Thus, escaping together is the only way to move forward.

Tapping In: A Movement Meditation For Wellness, Victoria Rodriguez

Dance (MFA) Theses

Victoria Rodriguez’s thesis paper and accompanying video explore the somatic movement sequence Tapping In. Tapping In was born to facilitate the mind-body connection, muscular balance, and flexibility as well as implement tools for the physical and mental release of trauma. The written manifestation explores the practices that allowed for the creation of the Tapping In movement sequences such as Pilates, Yoga, Emotional Freedom Technique, Physical Therapy, and more. Each method provides a unique and valuable stance on navigating the previously mentioned goals, but no single technique led to the results Victoria was looking for. As a result, it is through …

Our Sheep To Slaughter, Courtney Collado

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis paper and accompanying film explore the reality of mothering a school-aged child in America. The written document describes the creative manifestation and explains the stalemate at which American parents and gun sense advocates find themselves: over the past four decades of documented school rampage shootings in America, precious few laws have been enacted to protect American schoolchildren from gun violence. By June of 2021, a year in which many children were taught virtually, nine children have been murdered by gunfire on school grounds. Rampage shootings are a distinctly American issue, with little to no action being taken on …

A Mexican American’S Introspective On Identity And Embodiment Of The Lester Horton Technique, Fernando Carrillo

Dance (MFA) Theses

In this thesis, I analyze the cultural complexity I embody as a Mexican American. By revealing and naming the invisible power dynamics of white supremacy through a multiplicity of perspectives, I explain and give examples of stereotypes imposed on me and how it benefits whiteness. Having adapted to American culture, I have created a cultural multiplicity that has steered me away from my Mexican culture. I express the conflict of my consciousness when I feel I do not belong in specific spaces because of my heritage or tokenism. The embodiment of the Lester Horton Technique is my passport to navigate …

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 …

Mezcla, Liz Quinones

Dance (MFA) Theses

Modern-day colonialism negatively impacts marginalized Americans on a daily basis. Beyond the emotional detriments caused by microaggressions and stereotyping, systems of oppression create unequal access and opportunities for those who fall outside the margin of the “norm.”

Through the re-telling of her father’s migration story, researcher Liz Quinones uses personal narrative alongside scholarly research to expose the harmful impacts of white supremacy in America. Quinones investigates her own identity crisis and dissociation with Puerto Rican heritage that has been and continues to be white-washed by society. Using dance performance as a medium, Quinones creatively manifests her research while seeking reclamation …

Steps Last: A Pedagogy For Existing In The Vanishing Point, Cihtli Ocampo

Dance (MFA) Theses

In this thesis I will present Steps Last, a pedagogy for teaching flamenco to non-Spaniards rooted in the translation of the Andalusian methodology for transmitting flamenco from one generation to another. At the same time, I will examine how flamenco, at its essence, shatters the notion of the machine-body, freeing us to seek and exist within the “vanishing point” as a way of achieving permanence through ephemerality. First, I will present the history of the Steps Last pedagogy and explain how rhythm, singing, history and improvisation must be mastered in flamenco if one is to move comfortably within the form. …

Noire Pixe Dust: The (Royal) Power Of Black Validation Through Imagination/Actualization, Daphne Marcelle Lee

Dance (MFA) Theses

I am creating a world, a futuristic world that imagines all Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) as royalty. Please note that I understand the very concept of royalty is a construct and reflects images of power, hierarchy, and capitalistic rhetoric and, also, not exclusive to a European monarchy alone. I am revising and reclaiming these concepts as superpowers for the world's women of color to redirect and embody them as metaphors and tools to inspire, uplift and carry us through life. I also want to acknowledge the many cultures with different standards of royal practice and ways of being. …