Browsing by Subject "Dance"
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Item A long and boring story (illustrated)(2021-05-06) Riley, Magdalena J.; Sutherland, Dan, 1966-A collection of thoughts assembled between October 9, 2020 and April 27, 2021 regarding the art-life of Magdalena Jarkowiec.Item Auto/body/graphy and the black dancing body(2011-05) Escobar, Ninoska M'bewe; Jones, Omi Osun Joni L., 1955-; Rossen, RebeccaThis thesis considers how the Black dancing body constitutes both Black history and dance history by reading the body in Pearl Primus' Hard time blues, The Negro speaks of rivers and Strange fruit as physical auto/biography, or what I shall herein refer to as auto/body/graphy. The Black dancing body, because it is a repository of the Black experience, actively engages in the act of self-naming, self-shaping, and self-recognition. As such, it may be considered an auto/body/graphy that is situated in Black history, an instrument through which histories of origin and migration, struggle against oppression and colonialization, and the forging of identities and self-definition are inscribed and communicated. This thesis examines Primus' early choreographies as a discourse through which to consider the impact of Black cultural consciousness and the emergence of a Black aesthetic and Black corpo-reality in dance and theatre on the development of American modern dance before mid-century, and upon later choreographers who followed Primus.Item Ballet Hispánico : constructing Latinx identity through concert dance(2018-06-18) Figueroa, Brianna Lynn; Rossen, Rebecca; Beltrán, Mary; Bonin, Paul; Gutiérrez, LauraIn 1970, Tina Ramirez founded Ballet Hispánico in order to provide Latinx dance students with professional opportunities at a time when few existed. Over the next forty years, Ramirez transformed her school and folk performance troupe into a distinguished, multifaceted institution of contemporary dance with an elite performance company, a socially progressive education initiative, and mentorship programs for aspiring dancers and choreographers. In 2009, she entrusted the company to former Ballet Hispánico dancer, Eduardo Vilaro who currently acts as artistic director and CEO. This dissertation analyzes the complex negotiations required of this culturally specific dance organization across time. Throughout, I critically examine Ballet Hispánico’s successes and challenges in an effort to make visible the environment in which Latinx dance-making occurs in the US. My research converges at the intersection of dance studies and Latinx studies: both fields have grievously overlooked the cultural and artistic labor of Latinx artists accessing modern, post-modern, and contemporary dance styles. I argue that Ballet Hispánico strategically appealed to gatekeepers and audiences alike by constructing their identity in a manner that invites cross-cultural collaboration. In this way, they earned the patronage of city officials who helped them invest in invaluable infrastructure while garnering influential partnerships with leading intuitions like the Joyce Theatre. This approach also freed them to make alliances with notable non-Latinx choreographers who provided repertory in the absence of a pre-developed reservoir of Latinx choreographers. Under these conditions, Ballet Hispánico has advanced Latinx presence in concert dance with unmatched success. However, I also assert that there were concessions to this multicultural approach. By examining the company’s corpus of choreography, I reveal a complicated tapestry of representation that suggest complicity with certain stereotypes of Latinidad, especially with regard to race, gender, and sexuality. I contend that the proliferation of such images helps construe Latinxs as a nonthreatening Other at the expense of more constructive depictions found elsewhere in the repertoire. Ultimately, this body of research positions Ballet Hispánico as a point from which to begin assessing the history of Latinx artists in US concert dance and strategize for a more robust futureItem Black Brazilian female dancer-choreographer-educators : creating alternative axes of action in the African diaspora(2019-09-17) Oliveira, Agatha Silvia Nogueira e; Jones, Omi Osun Joni L., 1955; Rossen, Rebecca; Gutierrez, Laura; Anderson, Charles; Afolabi, OmoniyiThis dissertation examines the potential of black women dancer-choreographer-educators to re-imagine their artistic, cultural, and sociopolitical identities in the African diaspora. By introducing the concept of alternative axes of action as spatial longitudinal oblique lines established slightly outside of a mainstream vertical axis where bodily balance and motion - and sociopolitical actions - are often assumed to be performed, I argue that black women in the African diaspora have continuously faced systemic "pushes" off of this mainstream vertical "center-line" which expose them to what M. Jacqui Alexander calls the "nodes of instability." I contend that by playing with this instability in corporeal and sociopolitical dimensions, black women are developing the ability to find balance in motion and creating alternatives for their actions. By looking at Rosangela Silvestre's and Edileusa Santos's choreographies, methodologies, and participation in the history of dance - with especial emphasis on their travel and exchange between Brazil and the U.S. - I identify alternative movement languages, ways of performing Brazil, and ways of continuing to forge a black dance diaspora.Item Changuita Perla : creating narrative in dance choreography for a young audience(2006-05) Murray, Rachel Beth; Williams, HollyThis thesis document examines selected areas of the process of conceiving, choreographing and directing an original theatrical production at the University of Texas at Austin. The target audience of the evening-length dance piece, Changuita Perla, was fifth and sixthgrade students. The project represented a collaboration of artists (in music, scene design, visual art, lighting design, costume design) from New York and from the Department of Theatre and Dance.Item Chasing weightlessness : a return to self(2023-04-20) Muwwakkil, Love; Mason, Gesel; Rosen, Rebecca; Monroe, RaquelChasing Weightlessness: A Return to Self is a deeply personal and introspective exploration of my journey towards rediscovering an inherent sense of liberation through locating moments of flight and weightlessness. Reflecting on a series of professional and personal experiences, I identify embodied tools that allow me to grapple with the effects of the imposed colonial archive on the body and seek to answer these questions: What does liberation feel like in my body? How do we navigate and dismantle the imposed colonial archive that lives in our bodies? What strategies can we use to reconnect or resource the inherent liberation in our bodies and instill deep trust of self? What happens when we stop performing liberation and make it a lived experience? I highlight the above questions as a personal road map on my quest for flight and weightlessness. Applying embodied tools as praxis, I explore the creative iteration of my work, ReSourced: Portals of Possibility, side by side with the written documentation, as a collection of embodied attempts to locate and sustain a state of liberation in my body, as a way to counteract the tensions of being both Black and a woman, and to understand the experience of freedom in my first home, the body. This work highlights the tension between oppression and liberation that I am constantly negotiating and invites the reader to have an embodied experience alongside the reading.Item Choreographing borderlands : Chicanas/os, dance, and the performance of identities(2015-12) Salinas, Roén René; Rossen, Rebecca; Canning, Charlotte; Gutiérrez, Laura; Jones, Joni L.; Bonin-Rodriguez, Paul“Choreographing Borderlands: Chicanas/os, Dance, and the Performance of Identities” examines the unexplored work of barrio-based dancemakers who choreograph and rehearse the diverse political, cultural and emotional contours of Chicana/o life, thought, and borderlands worldviews. As creative concert dance practices that figuratively and literally per/form at the margins, the borders of both American and Mexican national cultures, I argue Chicana/o concert dance operates as an embodied site to house memory, acts as an important archive for Chicana/o history, structures space to interrogate culture, and in the process asserts a new aesthetics (repertoire) for Chicana/o dance and American concert dance more broadly. My project departs from the 1960-70s Chicano Arts Movement and situates today’s contemporary works within the cultural and artistic legacies produced through decades of innovation and reinvention. My dissertation brings the fields of dance, performance, and Mexican-American/Chicana/o Studies into conversation to consider the Chicana/o dance body as a site for identity production and contributes to larger conversations about race, class, gender and ethnicity and how they are per/formed through body and movement. The choreographies I analyze are Danza Floricanto/USA’s Alma Llanera: Spirit of the Plains (2009, 2014), Guadalupe Dance Company’s Historias y Recuerdos (2010), Latina Dance Project’s Coyolxauhqui ReMembers (2009), and the Aztlan Dance Company’s Loterialandia (2013). These case studies illustrate how dance chronicles Chicana/o barrio history, claims agency to remake tradition, and opens space to articulate contemporary Chicana/o aesthetics in movement culture. Each chapter is arranged thematically around recurring Chicana/o tropes and aesthetics practices. By locating Chicana/o choreographers and their respective companies in space, place, and time, I demonstrate how dancemakers actively participate in giving voice, body, and visibility to Chicana/o subjectivity through dance and contribute to larger genealogies and trajectories of Chicana/o cultural production and performance.Item Dancing in place: the radical production of civic spaces(2007) Somdahl, Katrinka Cleora, 1970-; Hoelscher, Steven D.; Adams, Paul C.Public spaces can be manipulated by choreographers to create political identifications that last long beyond the ephemeral performance event. How public space is defined and utilized is intimately connected with a society's definition of who is to be included and the kind of political community to be fostered. Through an engagement with feminist and political geographic writings I argue that dance, as an art form that is dominated by women, can create meaningful public spaces where these women express political attitudes, assert claims to the public realm, and actively use it for their own purposes. Using qualitative methods, three choreographers are highlighted to investigate how they each use symbolism, the social narratives concerning each site, and the built environment to communicate with their audiences about gentrification, environmental protection, and restrictive social mores. This work asserts that the social value of art combined with the nonverbal communication powers of the body leads to a heightened awareness of the political voice of the women involved in these urban performances.Item Dancing Latina identity : a rendering of contemporary Latina self-representation in American concert dance(2013-05) Figueroa, Brianna Lynn; Rossen, RebeccaWhen considering the Latina dancer in the United States it is easy to conjure images of a fruit crowned Carmen Miranda shimming in front of the camera, videos of Jennifer Lopez swinging her hips in dark and crowded clubs, sultry salsa dancers rocking and twisting on their bedazzled stilettos, or Jalisco girls who swirl the hemlines of their rainbow colored skirts as they parade down the street. These depictions of the Latina dancer are duly noted for creating a means of visibility for an otherwise invisible demographic. However, they also function to reinforce stereotypical ideas of the Latina moving body which limit Latina agency by positioning dancing Latinas within a set of prescribed representational practices. My study bridges Latina/o studies with dance studies in order to ask how Latina women are utilizing modern and contemporary dance styles to upset and redefine notions of the dancing Latina. I focus on the choreography of four women in particular; Michelle Manzanales, Maray Gutierrez, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, and Nancy Turano who each presented work in association with Luna Negra Dance Theatre’s Latina Choreographers Project. Through my study I place the project’s mission into dialog with the corpus of choreography commissioned during its three-year lifespan (2006-2009). My close analysis serves to elucidate the stories that the choreographers chose to tell. For some, the deconstruction of icons provided the most compelling exercise in the process of excavating beneath quintessential Latino facades. For others, the strong recollections of home and the feeling of not being able to assert a defined location characterized their investigations of cultural identity. The Latina Choreographers Project, I contend, sets a historical precedent by pursuing and presenting the work of Latina choreographers in a field that has traditional excluded the Latina voice. I argue that by engaging four choreographers with extraordinarily diverse relationships to Latinidad and presenting them to an American audience, the Latina Choreographer Project presents an invaluable opportunity for intercultural and cross-cultural dialog that aims to relay the complexity and nuances of a contemporary Latina experience.Item Dancing the local : two-step and the formation of local cultures, local places, and local identities in Austin, TX(2016-04-22) Ronald, Kirsten Marie; Hoelscher, Steven D.; Meikle, Jeffrey; Davis, Janet; Hartigan, John; Mellard, Jason; Rossen, RebeccaThis dissertation uses Austin’s two-step country dance scene to examine the construction of the local in American culture. Two-step is a social dance that is central to country music culture in Texas, Oklahoma, and the Southwest. Without a central governing body, the form and social norms associated with the dance vary across dance communities, which means that dancers use two-step to both construct and express their local culture. In Austin, the local two-step scene is a conservative response to neoliberal globalization, which many dancers feel is destroying Austin’s unique identity and culture. Here, the local operates along four interrelated dimensions. As a scene, the local is constituted through the performance of traditional gender roles; as a place, it is preserved and policed via social and structural constraints; as a form of belonging, it is a whiteness that is shaped by the Mexican and Mexican-American bodies and practices that it excludes; and as a scale, it is a terrestrially bound social formation that is inextricable from the global culture it purports to resist. Many cultural theorists emphasize the progressive potential of the local. However, the inner workings of Austin’s two-step scene suggest that the local can just as easily espouse an insular, exclusive politics, even in a supposedly progressive city.Item Del Corazón Nace El Enjambre : dancing contemporary expressions of brownness and the collective/self(2021-07-30) Saucedo, Erica Patricia; Mason, Gesel; Anderson, Charles O.Postmodern dance is a crucial site in which choreographers can mobilize embodied practice in order to analyze and grapple with constructs of belonging, identity, and cultural heritage through the body. Joining the current of contemporary postmodern choreographers who investigate cultural identity through the body, this creative research asks, how does brownness move? What does it mean to be brown and how might that study and exploration start and end with the body? These questions inspired the iterative performance ritual called del corazón nace el enjambre which premiered on March 1, 2021. This ritual both lives inside of and creates a digital ofrenda, or virtual altar/offering space, accessible via the link provided below. Disidentifying with cultural productions from across the Américas that point to a relationship between brown people and cockroaches, d.c.n.e.e. intersplices site-specific movement for camera with emergent poetry, digital projections, voice, and futuristic costumes in order to insist upon space for individuals living in-difference to craft and exist in states of unknowing, multiplicity, and communal world making. This question of what it means to be brown birthed a ceremonial praxis, a world, and a digital archive—all offering possible methods for belonging, remembering, and existing otherwise. This written thesis uses self-reflective writing to provide a rendering of these three aspects of d.c.n.e.e. and ultimately recognizes how practices of collective imagination are critical sites for dreaming of and creating the future worlds we all deserve.Item Designing and performing non-binary dance(2020-05) Wiley, Kendra Suzanne; Habeck, Michelle M.; Beckham, AndreaConcert dance performance has historically encouraged conformity to strict male and female presentations, or styles of dance that ignore and erase the gender identity of the performers. While modern dance and contemporary choreographers have expanded the vocabulary of dance in exciting ways, a rigid gender binary persists in much of dance today. Non-binary dance is a method of challenging gender norms within the dance world; a way for non-binary people to authentically represent themselves and claim agency through dance performance. This thesis documents the process of creating an auto-ethnographic research-based non-binary dance performance, ERROR 404: Gender Not Found (a non-binary dance), which emphasizes the intentional presence of my non-binary dancing body using choreography, text, interactive technology, and design in order to foreground non-binary representation. The performance also demonstrates the possibility of simultaneously filling the roles of both dance performer and lighting designer, as I use my body throughout to manipulate video game movement tracking technology and remote lighting control. A significant goal of the performance is to make the non-binary narrative relatable to cisgender, transgender, and non-binary audience members. Following the performance, members of the audience with various gender identities make contributions to a survey to express if and how they relate to the performance.Item Dis/embodied choreography(2012-05) Parkins, Michelle Elena; Williams, Holly A.; Justin, David; Rossen, RebeccaThis thesis investigates the intersection of physical and non-physical choreographic practices, culminating in a performed solo dance work titled Lilith. In a world increasingly consumed by virtual technology, the investigation is increasingly relevant to explore both in our personal lives and in the field of dance and choreography. This thesis examines the relationship between embodied and disembodied experiences while exploring the affect of these experiences on the mind cognitively and emotionally. In this thesis I investigate performances and written work about other choreographers’ investigations into computer-mediated methods of disembodying dance, laying the foundation for my own solo performance. Through experiential research into computer mediated-methods of altering choreography, I have explored the effect of non-physicalized ways of generating choreographic movement. I have equally investigated how a physically impulse driven movement has influenced the choreographic process. In the end, this work explores the tensional forces that lie between the physical and non-physical in a creative, choreographic process and attempts to find ways to create balance between the two.Item Florine’s flight : a reimagining of The Bluebird fairytale(2018-06-19) Wynne, Marika Nicole; Glavan, JamesFor my master’s thesis project, I am combining my passions for dance and costumes with my love of tradition and innovation to collaboratively create a short dance film, Florine’s Flight, that showcases my interpretation of Princess Florine’s journey though The Blue Bird fairy tale. Working together with a dancer/choreographer, a musician/composer, and myself as the artistic director/costumer, we gathered source material pertinent to our respective disciplines to inspire this inventive work. The Blue Bird, written by Madame d'Aulnoy in 1697, serves as the driver of the narrative of our film. The protagonist, Princess Florine, is featured in the ballet The Sleeping Beauty, when she appears with the Blue Bird himself to dance for Princess Aurora’s royal wedding in Act II. The costume Princess Florine wears in this pas de deux, the original choreography by Marius Petipa, and the original score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky inspired myself, the choreographer, and the composer in our respective processes. As a costume technologist and crafts artisan, my primary contribution to the production of this short film are the three distinct costume pieces the dancer wears throughout the piece. Each costume is inspired by traditional ballet tutus in different ways. Be it the structure of layered net, the style lines of an elegant bodice, or the iconic silhouette of a flat tutu skirt, I seek to reinterpret the tradition of ballet costumes in new and challenging ways. I endeavored to work with fabrics and materials differently than I ever had before, and to expand my knowledge of costume crafts through new fabrication techniques. Each costume emphasizes a narrative aspect of the moment it is worn in the film, and the dancer and music both interact with the costume pieces to great effect, heightening the overall experience of the viewer. It is my goal to have viewers enjoy the dance film because they should see the historical source materials that influenced our team’s creative choices. The film will be screened as a part of a gallery exhibit that provides additional context to its historical influences, the design process, and specifically the method of creating the costume pieces.Item The impact of participation in school-based performing arts(2012-05) Richards, Rachel Elizabeth; Rochlen, Aaron B.; Moore, LeslieThe current report reviews the literature on school-based performing arts and its impact on students’ academic and social lives. As a result of our nation’s current economic downturn, many school districts are facing difficult decisions of which school-based programs to continue or cut. The benefits and challenges of keeping school-based performing arts programs are explored. According to the literature, students may profit socially, emotionally, and academically from participating in music, theater, and dance. Additionally, research has found that school-based performing arts have the greatest impact on students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Despite the many benefits of participation in the performing arts, the reality of our nation’s current situation is explored and suggestions are provided regarding how to maintain the performing arts while adhering to a limited budget. Finally, this report outlines several suggestions for future research.Item Mayéutica de la vocaciones, el despertar del espíritu maestro(2008) Restrepo, Alvaro“El cuerpo nunca miente”, nos dijo la descomunal Martha Graham y es justamente sobre las verdades del cuerpo que va a tratar este texto. Ha llegado el momento de intentar plasmar en palabras, lo que han sido en mi vida estas dos décadas de Danza, estas dos décadas de cuerpo. Debo advertir que será imposible, por momentos, rehuir el tono autobiográfico y un tanto confesional de ciertos pasajes: la experiencia y la memoria de mi cuerpo serán por fuerza voces dialogantes en esta reflexión que no pretende otra cosa más que recoger una serie de preguntas y de conclusiones sobre mi oficio de bailarín / coreógrafo y, más recientemente, de pedagogo: detector / revelador / rebelador de talento y partero de vocaciones.Item Our stories heal -- mind, body and soul : pivoting to a healing-centered engagement in an applied theatre residency(2022-07-29) Manning, Courtney Nicole; Dawson, Kathryn; Alrutz, MeganProfessor, author, and youth development activist Shawn Ginwright proposes the importance of healing-centered engagement (HCE) for youth in urban communities and their facilitators. His scholarship invites readers to gain a unique perspective on how as youth development professionals engage and interact with young people to bring justice and support interactions that might be healing and restorative. Ginwright’s 2022 Book Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves argues how facilitators in social justice work with youth might move toward (HCE) from four pivots: awareness, connection, vision, and presence. This MFA thesis is a qualitative case study of a teaching artist facilitation experience during aa 9-week applied theatre residency at a group home facility in central, Texas. The researcher uses reflective practitioner and autoethnographic analysis to examine coded data representing how she pivoted (in relation to all four pivots) as a facilitator throughout the entire project, Our Stories Heal.Item Pass the Crown: How black artists advocate for protected freedom of self-expression and identity building by re-imagining the beauty of blackness in textured hair(2023-05) Kilpatrick, ParkerBlack hair culture has been a significant element in shaping race relations in the United States. The spread of authentic black hair stories will help protect the collective black identity from false, racist ideals, which has been done by black artists for decades. Although black people have the backdrop of personal experience as a black woman with my own textured hair stories, many others lack that stimulant to want to interact with black hair. Non-black people often aren’t the ones seeking black stories or, if they do seek black stories, they may have limited access to them. The most authentic ones are those that come directly from black people. Throughout the past century, oppressors manipulated this limited visibility of the black community to rewrite narratives that black hair was unclean and therefore indicative of poverty. Such falsified stories about the black experience kept black people in lower social orders and, in some cases, even turned them against themselves. No matter what they did, they didn’t quite fit into their own stories because they weren’t the ones telling them. Today, in a desperate attempt to maintain sociopolitical stratification by race, oppressors still try to rewrite black people's stories when they feel threatened. Luckily, black representation in the arts has bolstered true black stories above those created by non-black groups. I explore hair and identity and is where I continue to find my own space to use my art as activism.Item Pink booth confessions : unpacking the booth(2020-06-29) Heckler, Millie Catherine; Mason, GeselPink Booth Confessions emerges as a genre-bending performance piece, created as a means of survival for grappling with, confronting, and attempting to heal from sexual harassment and violence. A collaboration between three women, the work bridges concert dance, durational meditative performance art, original music production and live instrumentation. Within a pressurized theatrical “pink booth” performers activate a marriage between the dancing body and the expressive voice. Employing autobiographical dance to re-present and revisit moments from the performers’ pasts, dancers conjure memory worlds and embody various characters—including themselves—whom have impacted their lives through sexually-charged interaction. The work draws from feminist, queer, Hip Hop, Africanist, somatic, and psychoanalytic theoretical frameworks to investigate: How many voices live inside the body? Through supportive rehearsal and performance spaces, dancers play with staging and subverting gender and racial identities as a means of claiming and re-writing their stories. Within realms of conjured memory, the guiding question is: What would I say if I could say what I mean? Bringing voice to stories that lurk in closets, locked in secrets, performers ask: What happens when we bring life to secrets—stories that don’t make sense? How might the embodiment of these memories provide clarity about their complexity? And how might finding answers about the body, through the body, facilitate healing for all bodies?Item (Re)mixing rhythms/ choreographing new futures : envisioning Black queer possibility through rhythm tap(2020-08-14) Love, Michael Jerome; Rossen, Rebecca; Anderson, Charles O.; Thompson, Lisa B.Across performed and written portions, “(Re)Mixing Rhythms/ Choreographing New Futures” formulates and demonstrates “Mix(tap)ing,” a distinct performance-as-research method driven by rhythm tap dance. “Mix(tap)ing” embodies the Hip-hop practice of sampling by looping and layering cited portions of Black cultural history and popular media to create new interdisciplinary performances that make space for intersectional Black queerness. This method is carried out through four strategies—the use of formative Africanist, Black, queer, and feminist aesthetics as dancemaking structures; the reorientation of performer-audience power dynamics; a high-affect engagement with technology and media; and the adaptation of futurity as a liberatory praxis—that intermix theories and methods from performance studies, Black dance studies, Black studies, and Black queer studies. The written portion of the thesis is, itself, a “Mix(tap)e” and is comprised of a sampling of multiple modes of analysis to show how the method has created a dynamic body of artistic-scholarly work. Ultimately, by focusing on race, queerness, and identity, “(Re)Mixing Rhythms/ Choreographing New Futures” adds new dimensions to the breadth of current tap dance scholarship and posits Black vernacular dance as a vital site of study.