The Argentine tango, a beautiful and sexually-charged partnered dance form, is most often characterized as a passionate drama between a man and a woman, where the masculinity of the male dancer as the leader contrasts with the femininity of the female follower. Its origins are deeply rooted in earliest twentieth-century Argentine life, particularly in the barrios of Buenos Aires, where tensions of culture, race, class, sexuality and privilege clashed head on. Because tango is historically and popularly accepted as a heterosexual dance, little attention has focused on its very earliest development and practices, when men often partnered with other men to learn it. This practice was so common that in 1903 the Argentine magazine Caras y Caretas [Faces and Masks] published a series of photographs portraying two men dancing tango to illustrate its basic steps and maneuvers. Inside this early practice lie uninterrogated questions on issues of sexual preference, identity and homosexuality. As a professional dancer and dance scholar, I have explored this aspect of tango’s history from two perspectives: through traditional historiography that investigates the documentation of its iv early practice, and through choreography and performance of an original dance work that affirms that continued practice today. Tango Vesre is a dance performance, that through live performance and video projection, spotlights a 100-year evolution of male tango dance in the Buenos Aires of 1910 and 2010. This work analyzes male/male tango partnerships from historic, performative and choreographic perspectives, examining issues of homosexual bonding and sexual identity through tango dance practice. The choreographic creative process for the dance performance intertwines deep archival research in Argentina and the United States, ethnographic research in Buenos Aires, and studio/movement explorations. In 2009, tango was designated an “Intangible Cultural Heritage” by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations (UNESCO); Tango Vesre investigates this art form's unacknowledged history and brings forward a new perspective. / text

This dissertation shed light on the hitherto overshadowed area of nonfictional analog dance media by contextualizing and historicizing it within the North American dance field. It is a revisionist historiography examining how nonfictional dance media has been conceptualized, regulated, and institutionalized in tandem with the North American dance field's agenda of legitimizing dance as an artistic and academic field. Approaching the discursive shape of nonfictional analog dance media as a unique cultural construction, I argue that nonfictional dance media is not a simple stand-in for live dance, but an ambiguous and ambivalent object reflecting our beliefs and desires projected on dance. Thus, I suggest that nonfictional dance media provides a strategic setting for reconsideration of the operation of the dance field, especially that of North America. The research questions this study addresses include the following: how was the field of nonfictional dance media formulated and institutionalized according to the North American dance field's agenda of legitimizing dance as an artistic and academic field; how has nonfictional dance media constituted and reconceptualized the knowledge claims in the dance field by preserving and representing dance; and how has the discourse of nonfictional media resonated with the discourse of dance in modernity? As a historiography, I re-write the genealogy of nonfictional analog dance media within the formation of the North American field between 1927 and the 1980s. Also, for case studies, I compare the New York Public Library's Dance Division and the George Balanchine Foundation Video Archives to examine the discourse of dance preservation, while analyzing the schism between the intention and the reception of an ambitious TV dance program Dancing (Channel 13/WNET, 1993) to examine the discourse of dance representation. In so doing, I explore how nonfictional dance media has shaped and been shaped by the North American dance field's internal conceptualization of dance knowledge and external advocacy of legitimizing dance in its society. This study suggests that nonfictional dance media is--just as dance is--a phenomenon with cultural, economic, and political implications and imbalances. Particularly highlighting that media's duality of an icon and an index corresponds with the conceptualization of dance as choreography and performance, I further find that this duality resonates with the ambivalent desires of the modernist temporality. While time has been rationalized, the attraction of contingency has also increased in reaction to it. Similarly, while nonfictional analog dance media has been rationalized, controlled, and institutionalized according to the American dance field's agenda of legitimizing dance, this effort of rationalization not only raised the criteria of knowledge claims but also enhanced the attraction of the irrational, contingent aspect of dance. Given that, this dissertation argues that nonfictional dance media is not a simple imprint of dance but the barometer of ambivalent and fluid beliefs and desires projected on it. / Dance

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of this study is to begin to articulate the theoretical identity of the field of dance studies as an academic discipline and to produce a feminist intervention into the phenomena of disembodied scholarship, while asking questions about disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity within dance studies historically and today. My primary research questions are: What are dance studies research methods? And, which research methods, if any, are inherent to dance as an academic discipline? In order to answer these seemingly direct and simple questions, I also question the assumption that we know what dance studies research methods are. In Chapter 1 I first introduce and qualify myself as a dance artist and scholar, connecting my own experiences to my research; I narrate my research questions in detail and describe the significance, limitations, and scope of this project. In Chapters 2 and 3 I provide a history of the disciplinary and interdisciplinary origins of dance studies in higher education and situate that history within contemporary conversations in dance studies on disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. In Chapter 4 I offer an analysis of the National Dance Education Organization's (NDEO) Research Priorities for Dance Education: A Report to the Nation and The Dance Education Literature and Research descriptive index (DELRdi), an online searchable database that aims to document all literature and research in dance education (not dance studies) from 1926 to the present, as it relates to issues and methods in my own research. In Chapter 5 I identify and describe current research methods found in all dance studies dissertations granted from the 4 doctoral programs in Dance in the United States over a three-year period. This chapter begins to articulate the current theoretical identity of the field. I examine and report on current trends in dance studies research methods and draw comparisons across dance studies doctoral programs, setting the foundation for future discussion of dance studies research methods. In Chapter 6 I summarize the project and make suggestions for the future. A feminist lens is used throughout as a way of providing a feminist intervention into the phenomena of disembodied scholarship by asking questions about research methods (particularly the use of critical theory as a method for research and writing about dance) and if or how particular research methods lead to the production of embodied or disembodied scholarship. / Dance

No description available.

No description available.

“To understand why we are doing what we do now” – a qualitative study of dance historyteaching within the course Dansteori. This essay illustrates how teachers at upper secondary schools relate to teaching dance history within the course“Dansteori”, focusing on the aim that students should critically review different dance history writings. The study uses interviews and open-ended questionnaires, and the material have been analyzed qualitatively and discussed inrelation to historical thinking and norm-critical pedagogy. The study shows that a historical-scientific perspective is important in how teachers talk about the subject, but less important when it comes to what students should gain fromtheir studies. Instead, a general knowledge of dance history and an ability to connect ones dancing to a historical context, is at the center. The study also shows a conflict between the content and the time given as well as the student’s maturity. In relation to the theoretical perspectives, the historical-scientific perspective is prominent. By contrast, the norm-critical perspective is not as clear, and as I understand it, the critical scrutiny lies primarily within the norm rather than as a means of looking outside the Western box. The next challenge is therefore to not only review the conditions for how history is created, but also to question and change the structures that create knowledge.

This essay illustrates how teachers at upper secondary schools relate to teaching dance history within the course “Dansteori”, focusing on the aim that students should critically review different dance history writings. The study uses interviews and open-ended questionnaires, and the material have been analyzed qualitatively and discussed in relation to historical thinking and norm-critical pedagogy. The study shows that a historical-scientific perspective is important in how teachers talk about the subject, but less important when it comes to what students should gain from their studies. Instead, a general knowledge of dance history and an ability to connect ones dancing to a historical context, is at the center. The study also shows a conflict between the content and the time given as well as the student’s maturity. In relation to the theoretical perspectives, the historical-scientific perspective is prominent. By contrast, the norm-critical perspective is not as clear, and as I understand it, the critical scrutiny lies primarily within the norm rather than as a means of looking outside the Western box. The next challenge is therefore to not only review the conditions for how history is created, but also to question and change the structures that create knowledge.