The leisure mistress project is a perverse contemporary burlesque about leisure and inactivity investigated through a low-key style of dance performance, in an age where leisure pursuits are exhausting business. Julie-Anne questions her notions of dance, its place in her life and her work and challenges other ideas about what dance is. The concerns of the work include social, political, cultural and aesthetic issues. The core theme of leisure facilitates cultural investigation via performance with social critique being implicit. The process and the product are private, personal, idiosyncratic but have wider resonances and ramifications / Master of Arts (Hons) (Performance)

Buildings are largely static objects, while the people and programs that inhabit them and the landscapes surrounding them belong to a set of more dynamic, shifting and interconnected systems. The intention of the thesis is to demonstrate a sympathetic resonance between landscape and body, as architecture. This will be explored through the design of a dance performance and rehearsal space at The Ross Creek Centre for the Arts in Ross Creek, Nova Scotia, Canada.

This choreographic research identifies and examines triggers that can induce flow, as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, through a creative process and performance, illuminating a type of experience that supports awareness of flow characteristics in a dance environment. The methodology documents qualitative phases of self-reflection, interviews with current performing artists, and discussions with dancers that assisted in identifying key flow triggers, informing movement explorations that culminated in a new dance piece and performance. Flow triggers identified through this process were imagery, environment, awareness of audience, and touch, which were explored with the aid of aerial hammocks to create a tactile experience for the dancers in the work. By exploring flow triggers within the creative process the performers experienced and reflected upon flow characteristics, often applying personal triggers to find deeper focus within the dance. This study may inform artists and educators interested in a flow experience in their creative process.

This study is concerned with how mothers, who have been referred to a children's centre for support with parenting, interpret their interactions with professionals including midwives, health visitors, social workers and family support workers. Previous studies have concentrated on unhelpful, "them and us" othering practices, this project aimed to consider mothers' interpretations of interactions, exploring verbal and non-verbal interactions as well as identifying what interactions with professionals that were helpful or not and why? To explore mothers' stories, I designed an arts based performance ethnographic methodology. Through the use of theme boards and stream of consciousness writing in a drama group context, text was collected over an eighteen month period from 16 mothers. Initial review, editing and distilling of text was carried out with participants, generating 18 scenes for a play performed together in front of a live audience. Text not used in the play was further analysed using narrative analysis and produced an overarching metaphor of a 'dance of compliance'. The dance explores images of mothers navigating steps of vulnerability, risk and compliance. Inhabiting the dance were many overlapping victimizing narratives exposing stories of parenting support presented as life enhancing in a context of scarcity. I found that the women kept dancing not because they were empowered but because the dance is obligatory, driven by the systematic production of unhelpful signs that come to constitute their reality. Theoretical perspective/s used in analysis highlight how children's centres could become a space for symbolic exchanges of support bringing into the light steps of fortitude and humanity. Recommendations for practice centre on the need for professionals to engage in empathic interactions whist always looking for opportunities for mothers to participate in the day to day activities of parenting support.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2005. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 264-268). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Looking for ways that dance could be used as a tool for health promotion, I sought to explore dance choreography and performance as an alternative medium for educating and increasing awareness about college student suicide. Suicide is the second leading cause of death amongst college students and while research suggests that suicide is decreasing, in terms of attempted suicides, the problem may be increasing. While attempts to understand, predict and prevent the loss of lives have resulted in extensive literature, there has been very little systematic research completed. Compounded by limited proposed models for addressing college student suicide, and lack of evidence there remains a growing need to find effective health communication practices and best health promotion practices. This research study is an autobiographical case study that explores my embodied experience of choreographing and performing a dance about college student suicide. As a health promotion professional and a trained dance artist, I assumed the role of researcher and dance choreographer and I and my experience became the subject of this research study. I launched and conducted a six-week project on my university campus called "Dance For Life" and worked with a small group of three female undergraduate dancers to make the new dance piece. This dance project was the case under investigation out of which I presented an autobiographical narrative in the findings and discussion section of this paper. Reviewed health information, research findings, and data, as well as knowledge extracted from the dance group became in part material used to make the dance. As the choreographer, my role in the choreographic process spanned from expert to collaborator and rested on my vision for the story told that would be told through the dance. I collected m data in the form of:- video recordings; audio recordings; pictures; journal entries; field/ observational notes; video diaries; drawings; interviews with community-based artists; and memory recall. I then worked to sort, label, group, and analyze the data, piecing together my findings to write an autobiography that answered my research questions. My exploration highlighted the importance of community involvement in community-based health programming.Through participation in this project the dancers\' knowledge and awareness of college student suicide increased and positively affected their empathetic response toward members of the community. Using non professional dancers with varied dance skill levels did not inhibit creativity or diminish the quality of work produced. Instead it brought together real life people with diverse perspectives, creative solutions, and a passion for dance to produce a piece of art effective in its ability to \'touch\' the audience and draw them in to a place of greater awareness. Stigmas, and the lack of  education and visibility about this particular health challenge, have resulted in a low community response to affecting change. The post performance discussion, brought the greatest gains, in terms of educating the audience. They interacted with the project, asked questions, gave feedback and provided comments about what they experienced, learned, and understood. The overall success of the project, points toward the possibility of dance as an art form playing a more significant role in educating communities about sensitive, and difficult to talk about, health challenges. Being able to affect the knowledge, attitudes, and empathetic response of communities is a beginning step  towards overcoming the health challenge of college student suicide. Future research needs to focus on best choreographing techniques as it relates to audience interpretation. / Ph. D.

Various prior research studies have investigated the positive and negative effects of an audience on task performance, yet very little research has been conducted specifically on dancers. The focus of this study will be on the interaction between Goal Orientation and Level of Expertise in relation to social facilitation and task performance in ballet dancers. Participants were assessed based on performance with and without an audience at varying levels of expertise. The theory of social facilitation was examined in relation to several subject variables mentioned in background research. The results of this study suggest a trend supporting the hypothesis that a person's reaction to an audience is at least partly dependent on both Goal Orientation and Level of Expertise as explained by drive theory. This study gives dancers valuable insight on personal performance.

Cette thèse s'intéresse au processus de création chorégraphique d'un spectacle de danses traditionnelles en Bretagne. Elle a été menée à partir d’un terrain effectué au sein de la Kevrenn Alré, ensemble de musique et danse bretonnes basé à Auray dans le Morbihan, de novembre 2010 à novembre 2012. Comme la majorité des groupes bretons, cet ensemble crée son spectacle annuel pour le besoin d'un concours organisé par sa confédération. La recherche analyse les activités et les modes collectifs de production mis en œuvre lors de la fabrication du spectacle Abenn dimeurh sur le thème des préparatifs d'une noce en pays d'Auray vers 1900. La description ethnographique d'un moment de concours et l'analyse des dynamiques internes de la Kevrenn Alré permettent d'abord d'appréhender la relation du groupe à son environnement socio-culturel et d'interroger la façon dont le cadre compétitif façonne le processus de création d'un spectacle. La fabrication d'Abenn Dimeurh est ensuite observée en détaillant les différentes étapes organisées par les chorégraphes : émergence du thème, collectage, présentation du projet aux danseurs, écriture chorégraphique. Cette observation met en lumière la façon dont les responsables de la Kevrenn Alré, pour faire aboutir leur projet artistique, doivent articuler un processus de création nettement ordonnancé et une organisation collective des activités. Au fil du processus sont engagées différentes formes de coopération qui montrent que les acteurs envisagent la notion du collectif et le travail en groupe autour d'une vision commune du sens de l'effort et de la responsabilité partagée. Il se dégage de l’analyse que la définition du travail artistique comme une activité collective est opératoire dans le contexte de la danse bretonne de spectacle en tenant compte des spécificités de l'univers associatif. Dans cet univers, les membres de la Kevrenn Alré s'efforcent de concilier le plaisir du partage et la réussite au concours. De ce constat émerge que le processus de création marque la production de son empreinte en engendrant un spectacle qui exprime leur vision de la culture bretonne. / This thesis focuses on the process of choreographic creation of a folk dance performance in Brittany. It is based on fieldwork conducted in Kevrenn Alré, a Breton music and dance ensemble based in Auray in Morbihan, from November 2010 to November 2012. Like most Breton groups, Kevrenn Alré create their show to compete in the annual contest organized by the folk dance organization to which they belong. The research analyses the collective activities and modes of production implemented during the creation of the performance Abenn dimeurh on the theme of the preparations for a wedding in the Auray region around 1900.The ethnographic description of a dance contest and the analysis of Kevrenn Alré's internal dynamics first allow us to understand the group's relationship to its socio-cultural environment and to examine how the competitive framework shapes the creative process of a show. The making of Abenn Dimeurh is then observed by investigating the various steps organized by the choreographers: finding the theme, collecting data, presenting the project to the dancers, making and staging the choreographic score. This observation highlights the way Kevrenn Alré's leaders, in order to carry out their artistic project, must articulate a clearly organized creative process and a collective organization of activities. Throughout the process, various forms of cooperation are initiated, showing that the actors consider the notion of being and working together around a common vision of joint endeavour and shared responsibilities. The analysis shows that the definition of artistic work as a collective activity is operative in the context of Breton folk dance performance, taking into account the specificities of voluntary associations. In this environment, the members of Kevrenn Alré struggle to bring together the pleasure of shared activities and success in the contest. From all this, it emerges that the creative process leaves its imprint on the production by generating a performance that expresses their vision of Breton culture.

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