This thesis offers an interdisciplinary exploration of ‘embodiment’ in relation to the appreciation of dance as a performing art practised in contemporary London at the beginning of the twenty first century. Consideration of different uses of the term ‘embodiment’ suggests that while artists may approach the embodiment of their dance with a sense of personal intention, their dancing may also be understood to embody ‘ways of being’ that, enmeshed within a wider culture, raise questions as to the relationship between individual agency and the discursive practices within which dance is understood. Such conceptual reflections establish a theoretical context from which to investigate the viewpoints of dance artists themselves. Fieldwork amongst dance artists thus contributed to the research. Working in London but coming from a range of dance traditions and making work outside the ‘mainstream’ dance companies, their input provides valuable insights into what, at present, may be important aspects of culture that influence what is perceived as embodied in dance. In addition, their experiences of making and performing dance inform investigation of the relationship between phenomenological and semiotic approaches to dance. In this context consideration of what is embodied in dance is found to be important to reflection on its appreciation. Further, the appreciation of dance performance is considered as an embodied act, important to which is the phenomenological experience of dance as communicative. Such experience is suggested to be dependent on, but not completely bound by semiotic systems thus allowing for the personal agency of both performer and audience.

This thesis explores the contributions of dancers in performances of selected roles in the ballet repertoires of George Balanchine and William Forsythe. The research focuses on “leotard ballets”, which are viewed as a distinct sub-genre of plotless dance. The investigation centres on four paradigmatic ballets: Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments (1951/1946) and Agon (1957); Forsythe’s Steptext (1985) and the second detail (1991). It explores how performers across different company cultures perform and conceptualise several solo roles in these works. The research focuses on the dancers from the choreographers’ resident troupes (New York City Ballet, Ballett Frankfurt), and performers in the productions by several international repertory companies. The thesis is structured as a discursive, analytical space that merges two distinct vantage points: that of the spectator and of the performer. Dancers in this thesis, therefore, are not passive subjects, but important contributors and narrators of their individual processes and experiences. The study functions as a meeting place, bringing to light the links between the performer’s ideas and the spectator’s perception of the dance. The methodology integrates ethnographic approaches (observation and qualitative interviews) with movement analysis. The complex influences behind the dancers’ approaches are viewed in relation to their specific cultural contexts and Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. The examination of the finer details of the performances and dancers’ contributions in set choreography reveals a range of conceptualisations, from abstract to thematic imagery, and from fictional to documentary narratives. The study demonstrates that the dancers’ imprint in the leotard ballets is a complex set of culturally conditioned, embodied qualities and ii actions (both conscious and/or unintended). Together these form a type of individual “agency”, which shapes the look of the role and the overall ballet, particular to a single performance and to specific points in the dancer’s career.

Choreography inherently theorizes a relationship between bodies and space. My research pushes beyond the reach of the dancing body to the idea that choreography serves as a nexus of the politics of place and space, constructing a multiplicity of inter-relationships among bodies, sites, and technologies. In my dissertation on the US-based Japanese dancers, Eiko & Koma, I argue that the pair's choreography does exactly this, effecting as a result new spaces—which I term spaces apart—where alternatives to the dominant society may be rehearsed and entrenched binaries such as nature/culture and east/west may be challenged. By honing in on what kinds of spaces are generated by particular choreographic practices and to what ends. I propose a new framework for examining choreography that could be extended to artists in other fields, one that is not based in chronological or biographical (and thus historical) accounts, but one that takes space as its literal and metaphorical point of departure. This is a crucial new methodology because it illuminates recurring cycles and clusters of focus in Eiko & Koma's work, something that traditional accounts fail to grasp. In the dissertation, I establish four different types of spaces apart generated by Eiko & Koma's choreography, including spaces for mourning, reparation, interfacing with nature, and intercultural alliances. I analyze key dances from across the duo's repertoire alongside selected places that resonate with the choreography in order to elucidate the qualities and effects of each space apart. I then examine each space apart in the context of a larger grouping of dances, demonstrating how Eiko & Koma have adapted and regenerated particular spaces apart over the course of their four decades-long collaboration. My project is centered on the study of 24 stage, site, and video dances by the pair, representing approximately half of their body of work. The analyses I undertake draw from Dance Studies, Asian American Studies, Japanese Studies, and interdisciplinary theories of space and place. My work on Eiko & Koma builds on pioneering studies on Asian American performance in order to expand the field to include research on dance. I contend that Eiko & Koma's unique choreography provides an analytic lens through which to examine Asian and Asian American performance in the context of globalization, and demonstrates changing strategies for addressing questions of nationality, identity, diaspora, location, and intercultural collaboration.

Learning and teaching choreographies can be an arduous task. In ballet, most dancers learn by emulation i.e. "watch, copy and learn". The teaching process not only instructs the order of steps but also requires explaining the quality required for the performance. Notational systems are used in almost all fields of study, and dance notation with inferred domain rules are used to aid in the teaching of choreographies and dance. Few professional performers can read written choreography let alone visualise the movements involved, and this represents a considerable barrier to the utility of choreography in its written form. Real-time computer graphics are ideally suited to bridge the gap between written choreographic notation and performance, via the creation of a virtual dncer. It would be useful for professionals to better understand choreography and notated ballet scores as well as assisting to teach dance at all levels. To understand the needs and derive methods for a virtual ballet dancer system, there are three distinct parts and these provide the structure for this thesis. The first part researches into the fidelity that is required for a virtual ballet dancer. From this analysis, expressive motions are parameterised using Laban's effort parameters and results presented how participants distinguished between the different emotions performed at various levels of fidelity. The results provide understanding on how Laban's parameters define variations performed during the different expressive movement and the level of interpolation required for a user to distinguish the expressive performances. The second part presents methods for setting and evaluation of specified ballet positions (key poses) which form the foundation for ballet steps. Mathematical rules are developed and explained within the context of the ballet domain rules being represented. The resulting poses defined by the dance notation and the mathematical descriptions are evaluated by professional teachers and notators. The results are presented showing how basic ballet positions are accurately posed for a perfect dancer and variations from the perfect pose to the real-world. These poses are used as the foundation for layering the expressive algorithm on. The final part presents how Laban's Effort factors can be used for expressive interpolation between key poses, i.e. the quality of movement. Methods are analysed and algorithms implemented to develop variations in the movement between the set dance positions. These variations are matched to the expressive performances of real dancers analysed in the first part of this research in order to evaluate the algorithms derived with actual expressive performances. The results presented are the first major steps to produce an animated "virtual ballet dancer".

No description available.

No description available.

The aim of this research undertaking is to understand the potential development of dance performance in the context of cyberculture, by examining the way practitioners use new media to create artworks that include audience participation, and by endeavouring in their theorization. With specific reference to cyberspace as a concept of electronic, networked and navigable space, the enquiry traces the connections such practices have with conventions of the medium of dance, which operate in its widely known condition as a live performing art. But acknowledgement that new media and new contexts of production and reception inform the characteristics of these artworks and their discursive articulation, in terms of the way people and digital technologies interact in contemporary culture, is a major principle to their analysis and evaluation. This qualitative research is based on case-study design as a means of finding pragmatic evidence in particulars, to illustrate abstract concepts, technological processes and aesthetic values that are underway in a new area of knowledge. The field where this research operates within is located by a mapping of published literature that informs a theoretical interdisciplinary framework, which contextualizes the interpretation of artworks. The selected case studies have been subject to a process of systematic and detailed analysis, entailed with a model devised for the purpose of this enquiry. From this undertaking it can be claimed that while an extensive array of technologies, media and interactive models is available in this field, the artists pursue a commitment to demonstrate their worth for specifically developing (new media) dance performance, and for dance performance to articulate technological and critical issues for cyberculture studies. The results of this enquiry also contribute to conceptual understanding of what dance can be, today, in the light of technological changes.

Terpsichore in Jimmy Choo sets up a relationship between high fashion bodies, material/fabric and theatre dance choreographies. It argues that these relationships have been crucial in twentieth and twenty-first century art dance and fashion practices. It examines the complex web of consumption, negotiation and re-appropriation between dance and fashion. It investigates the relationship between performance, shape, form, fabric, haute couture, modern dance and the bodies that set all of these into motion. The thesis includes a series of visual materials carefully tailored to deliver the overall argument of the thesis: a genealogy of high fashion bodies, material/fabric and theatre dance choreographies has always existed. To answer how contemporary dance, a “product” rich in cultural capital, feeds, affects, is transformed and appropriated by the socio-political economy of high fashion, I provide collections of visual materials in thematic groupings which include excerpts from fashion films, advertising campaigns and live catwalk or fashion performances. I use visual analysis, art history, and detailed movement analyses while paying particular attention to textile and costume construction, image composition, and the role of the camera. Whilst movement analysis informs my work in several chapters, other chapters draw upon other aspects of comparative dance analysis. I establish a kinetic language to read fashion performance through modern and post-modern dance choreography. This language can then be used to develop new trends in dance and fashion practice. I argue that fashion choreographies are influenced by shapes, forms, and the mobility of fashion materials. I utilise the concepts of dynamic flow, tensile elasticity and experimental shapes in space in order draw links between the modern dance choreographies of Loïe Fuller, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham and current fashion editorials. In later chapters, I engage with how punk aesthetics and attitude in British fashion was appropriated to subvert normative bodily representation in mainstream high fashion. I examine multiple collaborations between fashion designers and established dance companies in order to unpack the negotiations that occur when dealing with corporate art sponsorship. Terpsichore, the muse of dance, inspires these pages. I envision her dancing alongside the models, the photographers; I see her whispering inspirations to the choreographers and fashion designers. I would like to think she choreographs new ways of thinking about dance, fabric and the fashion industry. Her movement is either tensile or fluid, depending on what she wears. Dance scholar Sally Banes (1987) put her in sneakers. I put her in Jimmy Choos.

Working from the context of contemporary dance, this research interrogates contemporary understandings of agency from the point of view of the dancer. Drawing on Sklar and Noland, and engaging in an oppositional improvisation practice in which I reject the embedded movements of my formal, codified dance training, I put forward the hypothesis that not only a more specific differentiation of kinesthesia into different modes is useful for articulating opposition, but that an emphasis on the role of agency in informing this articulation reveals more accurately the creativity of oppositional practice. Following a contextualisation of oppositional practice within approaches to dance such as those of Rosemary Butcher, Anna Halprin and Contact Improvisation, the research enters the controversial debate over the existence of agency, so as to attend to the theoretical aspect of the research question 'How is oppositional improvisation possible for a trained dancer?' I answer through discursive and reflective practice-based methodologies articulating, from a first-person perspective, the dynamic interaction between agency and kinesthesia through improvisation. The self-determination claimed by the oppositional body is contested by social constructivist theories negating individual agency. I critically engage with Judith Butler, as representative of this approach, and also draw from Jacques Rancière and Michel de Certeau, to indicate bodies capable of acting independently of conformity. In doing so, I appropriate agency from the context of social theories for use in dance discourse, encouraging hybrid forms of knowledge. I also draw upon Susan Leigh-Foster's and Merleau-Ponty's notion of embodied subjects, whose sense of agency is inherent to the self-givenness provided by the first-person perspective. I argue that, in improvisation, opposition stems from the interaction between agency and kinesthetic awareness, activated by the dancers' lucid moment, the understanding not just of possessing kinesthesia, but that this makes of them agents able to oppose their embeddedness. This research articulates the importance of the dancer's perspective and agentic nature as a means to expand the knowledge and making of dance. In doing so, it reconfigures the trained body by expliciting its un-danced capabilities for agentic opposition; it reconfigures it as an intentionally abject body, evidencing potentials for further developments in dance.

The focus of this thesis is community arts and health provision for older people. It presents an ethnography of two community dance for older people groups in North West England, UK. It explores the experience of being a participant in the groups, of facilitating the groups and, additionally, of researching with the groups. I acted as both the researcher and the dance artist facilitating the sessions. Much of the existing arts and health literature focuses on the outcome of an intervention. This thesis instead turns its attention to the processes of community arts, seeking to understand more about the mechanisms that might lead to the studied health and well-being outcomes. The data were collected over a period of 13 months and includes session plans, videos of sessions, recorded conversations with dancers (participants) and reflections of the dance artist/researcher in both text and movement. The findings chapters reflect the modality of collection: Listening to the dancers talk about the sessions, Watching video recordings of the sessions, Dancing a response to the sessions and the process of researching and Reflecting through writing on the process of being a researcher. Using thematic analysis, both the dancers’ and the dance artist’s experiences were interpreted through a framework highlighting the physical, psychological and dimensions of participation. The dance artist’s experience was additionally organised with respect to the session planning. The use of the creative movement as a thinking process further revealed that there is much in community dance that does not translate to text; bodily held knowledge and experiences do not transpose to language easily. My thesis contributes to the arts and health and gerontology literatures by revealing the care flowing between the participants and the artist in the sessions and the work required of all members of the group to facilitate that care. It also contributes methodologically through the richness uncovered by the multi-sensory methods employed.