Thesis (Ph. D.)--Texas Woman's University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 248-257).

Thesis (Ph. D. in anthropology)--Washington State University, May 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 115-122).

The SocioKinetic-bodymAPP, an Improvisation Tool for a Dance and Movement Practice applies a practice-as-research fieldwork methodology, framed by a sociokinetic form of analysis, to an interrogation of the negative influence of familiarity and habit in the choreographic workplace and practices of contemporary dance. The bodymAPP is an innovative system that offers a uniquely embodied method for exploring and experiencing human movement that is targeted to students, professionals and educators in the dance and performing arts who wish to uniquely enhance and expand their creative skills, expertise and understanding of improvisational techniques and possibilities. The need for such a ‘tool’ arose from my awareness, as a contemporary dance choreographer and educator of over 30 years standing, of the difficulty to avoid ingrained work patterns and practices when attempting to innovate or produce radically different ideas and directions in one’s daily routines as an artist. This thesis demonstrates a structured method and system for re-routing habitual work tendencies towards enterprising new areas of insight and surprise. Through applied concepts and holistic techniques, this research’s devised movement application tool and system, the bodymAPP (a ‘movement APP’ for the body), is formed and informed by a cross-disciplinary triangulation and integration of three key areas: sociology, everyday life and dance. From everyday life, an analytical deconstruction of walking and other pedestrian activities in public space supplies sociokinetic principles of movement that form the backbone of the bodymAPP system. Sociologists of the everyday provide a catalogue of techniques and ‘lenses’ for re-perceiving and re-engaging familiar territories of daily practice. Three in particular, accredited separately to 20th century Surrealism, Georges Perec’s notion of the ‘infraordinary’, and Husserl’s ‘phenomenological reduction’ – oblique, minutiae, epoché - were utilised in the bodymAPP’s development and are ingrained into its processes. Influenced by the legacies and precedents of Rudolf Laban, William Forsythe and Judson Dance Theatre in the areas of improvisational dance and movement analysis, this thesis is predominantly a practical manual containing the many tasks and strategies devised and tested in the studio with the assistance of a team of semi-professional and professional contemporary dancers. These exercises are used to learn the bodymAPP and apply it as an embodied tool to the exploration and invention of new movement experiences and possibilities. Crosspollinating Madeline Gins and Arakawa’s notion of ‘architectural body’ and Drew Leder’s ‘phenomenological anatomy’, the SocioKinetic-bodymAPP can be described as an ‘architected phenomenological anatomy’ whose purpose is to create, in the words of Michel Serres, ‘an exquisite proprioception’. This research centrally contributes to improvisational practices and creativity in the fields of dance and performance.

This thesis takes the work of Merce Cunningham and William Forsythe as case studies for a socio-historical analysis of choreographic space and, in so doing, develops a sociology of dance around the qualitative study of spatial aesthetics. By locating the spatial innovations of these artists in the social space of their practice and in the light of spatial models inherited by each, it argues that the choreography of space can express ideals of human relationality produced in and productive of its broader societal landscape. Drawing from Henri Lefebvre’s contention that ‘the space of a (social) order is hidden in the order of space’, the thesis takes classical ballet as a primary example of how political ideals come to be embodied in spatial aesthetics and uses the ‘classical model’ to coordinate a sociologically orientated dance-historical context for these artists. The thesis is structured around four case studies that together form a context for understanding Cunningham’s and Forsythe’s spatial practices. These are: firstly, a sociopolitical history of harmony in courtly expressions of classical ballet from fifteenth- century Italy to late Imperial Russia; secondly, an analysis of George Balanchine’s and Martha Graham’s respective choreographies of the ‘American geographical imagination’; thirdly, a comparative study of Rudolf von Laban’s and Oskar Schlemmer’s theories of space and technology in their pre-war German contexts; finally a contextualisation of John Cage’s 1952 event in relation to Marshall McLuhan’s ‘electronic age’ and John Dewey’s ‘democratic’ social space. The final two chapters weave these spatial models into comparative frames for measuring the socio-historical specificity of Cunningham’s and Forsythe’s choreographic spaces. Cunningham’s ‘no fixed points’ aesthetic is understood as producing a coexistent space commensurate with McLuhan’s electronic paradigm and Dewey’s democratic individualism. Forsythe’s fluctuating space is understood as producing a ‘space of flows’ emblematic, for Manuel Castells, of a late twentieth-century ‘digital age’.

Thesis (B.A.)--Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses.

<p> The dance space is the warming hearth of the dancer&rsquo;s heart and the active landscape in which the moving body plays, feels, and apprehends. This practice-led research study emerged from this somatic landscape assembling itself into a work choreographed around the motif of the neuromyofascial web as the architecture of the physical body and the conservator of its emotional life. A depth psychological perspective is employed to examine the fascial web&rsquo;s influence on the retrieval of psychoactive content supporting the dance/movement therapy participant&rsquo;s individuative process. The neuromyofascial web is explored through its restorative dynamics, stabilizing the physical body and releasing transformational content within the emotional body through the informing power of authentic movement. The tensegral nature of architectural design and the biotensegrity of the neuromyofascial web are evaluated as a therapeutic complement to the activities of dance/movement therapy, expanding the application of its principal protocols. A psychophysical analysis of the methodologies employed by American modern dance pioneers reveals their instinctual reliance on the neuromyofascial web and affirms authentic movement&rsquo;s ancestral roots employed in the depth family of somatic therapies available today. Aspects of practice led research inspired a diagrammatic representation of the defining elements within kinesthetic experience and encouraged the creation of a movement manual for dance/movement therapists supporting the integration of movement and meaning. </p><p>

The focus of this creative project is on the formation of identity through the lens of a black woman. I will be exploring stereotypes, the black woman’s body, the process of teaching and learning and double consciousness. Through research into the history of African American dance, and through the researcher and choreographer’s personal experience of being a black woman and shared experience of being a woman, I will be studying how movement can mediate resistance, assimilation, and encourage progress and development in a racially, politically charged environment. The choreographic component of this creative project was completed in three parts, The Walk Part I, The Walk Part II and Nneka. Visual records of the three choreographic pieces are available through the Scripps Dance Department.

The spring of 1959 marked the beginning of a hugely successful ballet exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted over three decades. In this dissertation, I examine the opening years of this exchange, when ballet suddenly became an important arena for political and aesthetic conflict between the world’s two superpowers. Ballet had a significant place in the cultural Cold War. Russians considered it a national art form, while Americans were proud of their young but innovative companies. Soviet and American ballet underwent surprisingly similar aesthetic shifts during the mid-twentieth-century, away from realistic narrative ballets and towards musically-focused ballets. Despite these similarities, critics and audiences often saw the touring works through their own domestic political and aesthetic lenses, interpreting them in very different light from their creators and creating a series of deep aesthetic misunderstandings. The exchange tours were enormously popular, and yet the curtain onstage could be just as iron as the one in the middle of Europe. I employ a transnational perspective, drawing on a combination of Russian and American sources to investigate both the conciliatory and the alienating effects of the exchanges. Using reception theory as a model for understanding cultural diplomacy, I show how ballet played a substantive role in developing the Soviet-American relationship, though not always for the better. In the short term, the goodwill generated by the successful tours helped normalize relations between the Soviet and American governments at a time when nuclear conflict was a real threat. However, the cultural misunderstandings raised by the ballet tours also formed part of a pattern of miscommunication and circular internal discourse that contributed to the inability of the two superpowers to resolve or mediate their opposing world views. At the same time I argue that the very misunderstandings generated by Cold War exchange continue to inform American attitudes towards ballet. Reexamining the ballets performed during the tours through the defamiliarizing process of exchange can suggest new ways of interpreting 20th-century ballet aesthetics. / Music

<p> George Balanchine was one of the most prolific and influential choreographers of the twentieth century. He was also a skilled musician, trained at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. His ballets have been celebrated for their musicality by prominent dancers and musicians alike. However, the concept of choreographic musicality, and the means by which it is achieved in his ballets, has remained largely elusive. This dissertation analyzes two works that Balanchine set to music by Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky: <i>Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux</i> (1960), set to an interpolation in <i>Swan Lake</i> (1877), and <i> Theme and Variations</i> (1947), set to the fourth movement of the Third Orchestral Suite (1884). The analyses combine perspectives from traditional music analysis, dance transcription, and digital video annotation. The methodology takes advantage of Balanchine's strong musical literacy to examine, first, the musical scores, as he did, and then his choreographies in relation to the scores. The analyses connect elements of his choreography directly to their probable sources in the music, and they show that Balanchine was guided by discernible priorities in setting dance to music: that dance and music reflect a partnership rather than dominance by one party; that dancers move with unreserved energy, reflected in steps that cross musical boundaries or anticipate musical ideas; and that dance establish a strong relationship with its music before it is free to conflict with it. Balanchine's choreomusical style encompasses many different types of relationships between music and dance, and he achieved what may be described as musical artistry by a variety of choreographic techniques. The analyses in this study offer a detailed view of important aspects of Balanchine's multifaceted choreomusical style.</p><p> To examine Balanchine's choreography, this dissertation presents a method for transcribing dance in a music-based notation system that prioritizes the representation of pitch with rhythm. It introduces a new "choreomusical notation" that maps "choreographic pitch" (or, spatial height) onto the vertical axis and "choreographic rhythm" onto the horizontal axis of a musical staff. Using this notation, visual representations of dance and music are aligned in a "choreomusical score," and analytic paradigms developed in music theory are applied to works of dance with music. Unlike most other systems of dance notation, this choreomusical notation is not intended to capture choreography in a comprehensive way; rather, it is designed to distill some of the most musically salient elements of a dance into notation for the purpose of intermedia analysis. Compared with other choreomusical analyses that use dance notations, this dissertation brings Balanchine's ballets and their musical scores into closer visual and cognitive proximity. This choreomusical notation can also be adapted to reflect musically salient aspects of other dance styles. Sample analyses showing extended applications, with excerpts from minuet, Bulgarian folk dancing, cartoon, and rave dancing, are included in the final chapter.</p>

This research contextualises, evaluates and critically examines specific methodologies for integrated/mixed-ability dance that pertain to re-framing the dancer. Integrated/mixed-ability dance is committed to inclusive practice thereby changing the old order of aesthetics in favour of a new approach. It is this innovative work that this study has documented. The body (in dance) is understood as a complex phenomenon that engages with issues of consciousness, perception and temporality. The synthesis of philosophy (most specifically phenomenology), structuralist theory (with reference to Althusser and Foucault) and creative practice (with specific reference to the work of two contrasting integrated/mixed-ability practitioners), evolves an ideology and aesthetic for integrated/mixed-ability dance that will determine the extent to which - changing the beauty aesthetic in dance can be achieved. The core enquiry is based upon the critical evaluation of the integration of disabled and non-disabled dancers within the practices of Adam Benjamin and Alito Alessi. Their overlapping but divergent methodologies stress issues of embodiment and identity and make a plea for different forms of thinking about how the body is represented in dance. I argue that within integrated/mixed-ability dance, improvisation is an effective learning tool wherein bodily activity is conceptualised as multi-dimensional, inter-modal activity that pertains to ethical and social facilitation. The critical reflective practice and cross-evaluation (from a phenomenological perspective) presents research findings that provide subjective (experiential) and philosophical evidence that contributes to the field of integrated/mixed-ability dance and the wider scholarship of Western contemporary dance. My thesis concludes that: Benjamin and Alessi's methodologies amount to a phenomenological understanding of the dancers' experiences that is significant for evolving integration. I argue that is achieved through perceptual processes and provides effective understanding of the embodied structure of experiences (consciousness) in the space. Concurrently, critical and philosophical analysis presents substantial evidence for the role of sensori-motor (body schema) activity and for the re-conceptualisation of body image. That argument highlights the complexity of the relation between body schema, body image and habit, and pertains to both aesthetic and ethical considerations.