This thesis document articulates the development of Dance/Video Mashup as a Choreographic Process. Prior to this movement thesis I determined a list of goals I would aim to achieve throughout the exploration of Dance/Video Mashup as a Choreographic Process. The goals aimed to develop a choreographic process that sampled movement from videos found online, create a website that documented the creative process of developing a screendance, realize an artistic need and develop clear guidelines for future choreographers. This document narrates and evaluates the creative process of developing guidelines for Dance/Video Mashup and clearly articulates the guidelines for future researchers and choreographers. The supplemental file attached allows readers to view the screendance, Somniloquies, created through Dance/Video Mashup as a Choreographic Process.

This qualitative research study was designed to gain a deeper, more profound understanding of the lived experiences of collegiate male dancers. Through three phases of research, this study uncovered societal and familial obstacles collegiate male dancers often endure during their dance journeys, and describes how males navigate and transcend them. Extensive interviewing offers detailed glimpses into the lives of 9 male students who participate in collegiate dance programs. The study reveals participants’ dance experiences prior to and during college; recognizes and questions common factors that influence collegiate male participation in dance; and identifies how male dancers feel supported and/or unsupported by their program. An experiential workshop series applied and explored existing pedagogical suggestions offered by other scholars. Subsequently, a rehearsal and performance experience physically investigated emergent themes. Recommendations are offered on how to better encourage, cultivate, and support collegiate male dance populations through enhanced pedagogies and program improvements.

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Since the mid-1970s, researchers in student development theory, research, and practice have examined the experiences of first-year university students with the aim of improving quality of educational life and student motivation to stay in school (Greenfield et al., 2013). First-year students are viewed as vulnerable to attrition as most leavers depart during or immediately following year one (van der Zanden et al., 2018). This is the first doctoral study to explore first-year experience with university Dance majors.The purpose of this study is to illuminate first-year experience in a postsecondary Dance setting through students’ first-person accounts. Research methodology was guided by the applied phenomenology of education scholar and philosopher Max van Manen (1990/2014) and involved my direct participation and observation in two Dance classrooms along with in-depth interviewing of six self-selected students over the entire academic year. Data gathered through these procedures were analyzed for collective and individual meanings. Students’ first-person perspectives are presented in four chapters representing four macro-categories of student experience found in the data: curriculum, faculty, peers, and individual practice. Findings are then discussed in relation to extant literature in student development in higher education, combining sociological, behavioral, and epistemological perspectives from the foundational theories of Vincent Tinto (1975/1993), Alexander Astin (1984/1999), and William G. Perry, Jr. (1968/1999). Students’ first-person experiential accounts extend concepts from these theories, as well as offering insights unique to dance education. From their lived experiences in university Dance, first-year students shared the educational experiences that were significant and meaningful to their learning and growth. These include the affective, cognitive, somatic, and social meanings they made from their experiences of curriculum, faculty, peers, and self. Within a web of academic and social supports, personal self-reflection, and individual meaning-making, first-year students deepened their understandings of their dance practices and of themselves as dance artists and learners. / Dance

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In the year 1900, ballroom dancing consisted of mainly the Waltz, the Polka, and a few other folk dances that had lasted since the late seventeenth century. For over a century, the Waltz had been the favorite dance of ballroom dancers, who typically consisted of the upper class white society. Religious organizations were very much apposed to the Waltz and all ballroom dances, claiming that ballroom dancing was the work of the devil. At the beginning of the twentieth century, ballroom dancing began to change dramatically as Americans found themselves intrigued by other cultures, especially African trance and folk dancers in the Americas. Now, one century later, ballroom dancing consists of over thirteen dances that are highly defined and have many roots in the African culture. In this thesis, I show that ballroom dancing has traditionally been a mostly white (and historically elite white) style of dance whose roots lie deep within the African slave trade and the traditions, rituals, and music that Africans brought with them across the Atlantic. Despite the historically white-dominated society in the Americas, ballroom dancing would not be what it is today had it not been for elements of African culture transcending racial lines and being incorporated into white culture. I hope to demonstrate that ballroom dancing was an exercise of taking many elements of African music and dance and blending them with the conservative mannerisms of the elite white class, thus creating what the latter would consider "civilized dancing."

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The thesis is concerned with the exploration of the notion of ‘flow’ from both a psychological and dance analysis perspective in order to extend the meaning of flow and move beyond a partiality of understanding. The main aim of the thesis recognises the need to understand, identify and interpret an analysis of the moments of flow perceivable in a dancer’s body during improvisatory practice, through technologically innovative means. The research is undertaken via both philosophical and practical enquiry. It addresses phenomenology in order to resolve the mind/body debate and is applied to research in flow in psychology by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, and flow in movement analysis by Rudolf Laban and Warren Lamb. The significance of this endeavour can be seen in the reconsideration of the relation between mind and body, and art and science which informs the methodology for the research (Part One). The three main outcomes of the research are related to each of the three subsequent parts. The first research outcome is the articulation of a transdisciplinary approach to understanding flow and was developed by expanding on the current definitions of flow through an innovative transdisciplinary methodology (Part Two). Research outcome two addresses the intersubjective nature of flow, which was identified within improvisation. From this two methods were constructed for the collection and interpretation of the experience of the dancer. Firstly, through reflective practice as defined by Donald Schön. And secondly, an argument was provided for the use of motion capture as an embodied tool which extends the dancers embodied cognitive capabilities in the moment of improvisation (Part Three). The final research outcome was thus theorised that such embodied empathic intersubjectivity does not require a direct identification of the other’s body but could be achieved through technologically mediated objects in the world (Part Four). Subsequently, the findings from the research could support further research within a number of fields including dance education, dance practice and dance therapy, psychology, neuroscience, gaming and interactive arts.

Dance performance that is inclusive of dancers with differing corporealities has the potential to generate positive societal change with regard to perceptions of physical difference. Dance is a valuable site for exploring the placement of the physically disabled body in contemporary society, and for disrupting existing perceptions of disability as transgressive. This can come about through the embodied presence of both dancer and viewer, entering into a relationship grounded in intersubjectivity, without having to rely on symbolic signification. This thesis examines the placement of disabled bodies in dance performance from the intersecting perspectives of Critical Disability Studies, Performance Studies and Interpersonal Neurobiology in order to formulate a framework for theorizing perceptions of disability, the act of viewing dance and the impact of choreographic intent on viewers’ perceptions of physical difference. In the first section, the sociopolitical placing of disabled bodies in western society is interrogated and a historiological study of both disability identity and the emergence of integrated dance is critically analysed. The second section provides detailed analyses of three dance performances that are inclusive of dancers with physical disabilities: GIMP (2009), Heidi Latsky, Diagnosis of a Faun (2009) Tamar Rogoff, and water burns sun (2009) Petra Kuppers. Each represents a specific understanding of disability, creating an evolutionary framework for conceptualizing different perceptions of disabled bodies as either monstrous freak, heroic victim or corporeally diverse. The third section creates connections between new knowledge in interpersonal neurobiology and viewers' perceptions of disability that are activated through viewing dance performance, thus providing an understanding of the mechanisms of discrimination and marginalization of people who embody difference, as well as uncovering mechanisms that have the potential to be reparative. The application of neuroscientific knowledge to Performance Studies can be modulated and expanded by considering the interpersonal communicative dimension of dance performance that is inclusive of differing corporealities. A theoretical approach that encompasses the neuroscientific conceptualization of intersubjectivity in creating empathic attunement between viewer and dancer, can offer a means of understanding the innate potential of dance performance to bring about societal change.