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The purposes of this study were (a) to determine whether contextual interference (CI) is viable for acquisition and retention when blocked practice is implemented within a random order, and (b) to determine what amount of repetition needs to be utilized in blocked practice within a random format in order to promote enough interference in acquisition to aid retention. / Eighty-four male volunteer students enrolled in Florida State University during the 1992 summer session served as subjects for this study. They were randomly assigned to six groups. The blocked practice (BP) group practiced the circle target series in blocked order for 150 trials; the random group (RP) practiced the tasks randomly. The blocked practice within a random order groups (BPWRO3, BPWRO4, BPWRO5, and BPWRO6) differed in number of repetitions as indicated by the number for each group (3, 4, 5, and 6 repetitions), with a total of 150 trials for each subject in each group. After 10-minute intervals subjects performed 24 trials in the retention phase in random format in the circle target series. Eight dependent measures were utilized: reaction time (RT), movement time one (MT$\sb1$), movement time two (MT$\sb2$), total movement time (TMT), total performance response time (TP), accuracy for the first movement (AC$\sb1$), accuracy for the second movement (AC$\sb2$), and total accuracy (TAC). / The results of this study provide minimal support for contextual interference. According to the theory, the random practice should help the subjects to recall more than the other groups (the blocked and combined practice), since a deeper level of processing is required when the task is varied from trial to trial. The combined practice groups shared interference effects during acquisition for groups having both random and blocked features. These groups (BPWRO) also produced retention benefits in speeded movements and reactions but not in accuracy. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-11, Section: B, page: 5961. / Major Professor: Tonya Toole. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.

O que são obras de arte, objetos únicos ou transformações de outras obras. O que a dança faz. O dançarino é quem pensa seu corpo ou é seu corpo que o pensa. Como se dão unidades de movimento, como aparecem, como e onde se fixam. De onde vem o olhar, para onde vai, que funções ou disfunções ele cumpre. Qual o lugar da relação entre intérpretes e espectadores, dissolução ou reformulação dessa fronteira. Pode uma obra de dança ser pensada nos moldes de um ritual, como o define Claude Lévi-Strauss [2011], enquanto uma busca um tanto desenfreada pelo contínuo do vivido em oposição à descontinuidade do pensamento mítico. Quantos corpos cabem num corpo, quantas pessoas podem ser um corpo. Não seria também o processo criativo um vasto ritual de passagem, como o descreve Victor Turner [2005], dançarinos neófitos que se deslocam do mundo social para voltarem a ele transformados, refeitos em corpos outros. Pode a dança ser considerada análoga à poesia, por transformar no corpo o que a poesia transforma na língua. São alguns dos problemas que vou criando ao longo deste ensaio, que é fruto de uma imersão etnográfica no universo dos ensaios do Núcleo Artérias, grupo de dança contemporânea da cidade de São Paulo, dirigido pela coreógrafa Adriana Grechi, com o qual me encontrei um tanto fortuitamente, devido ao interesse primeiro de etnografar processos criativos. Meus interlocutores em campo, além de Adriana, são nove dançarinas e três obras de dança contemporânea, Público [2010], Fleshdance [2012] e Bananas [2013], que são aqui desdobradas enquanto processos. A proporção teórica deste ensaio é fruto de algumas leituras mais significativas que fui fazendo ao longo do mestrado, leituras que passaram a informar a imersão etnográfica a que eu me propunha, influenciando meu olhar em campo e consequentemente o sentido das notas que eu ia fazendo. Sua porção etnográfica provém das notas que fui produzindo ao longo dos processos de Público, Fleshdance e Bananas, que frequentei semanalmente, do início ao fim, ora à distância do olhar ora adentrando os processos criativos, pontualmente, quando elas me pediam considerações. A maior parte do tempo passei no chão, sentado a um canto da sala de ensaios, em silêncio, observando e anotando, à mão. Foram três cadernos de campo inteiros. / What are works of art, unique objects or transformations of other works. What does dance do. Is the dancer who thinks their body or their body thinks the dancer. How do units of movement appear, how and where do they attach. Where does gaze come from, where does it go, what functions or dysfunctions does it meet. What is the place of the relationship between performers and spectators, dissolution or recast of that border. Can a dance work be thought of in terms of a ritual, as defined by Claude Levi-Strauss [2011], while a search somewhat unrestrained for the continuous of living as opposed to the discontinuity of mythical thought. How many bodies fit in a body, how many people can be a body. Is not the creative process also a wide rite of passage, as described by Victor Turner [2005], turning dancers into neophytes who move from social world to get back to it transformed, remade in other bodies. Can dance be considered analogous to poetry, by transforming in the body what poetry transforms in the language. These are some of the problems that create over this essay, which is the result of an ethnographic immersion into the world of the rehearsals of Núcleo Artérias, contemporary dance group from São Paulo, directed by choreographer Adriana Grechi. My interlocutors in the field, besides her, are nine dancers and three works of contemporary dance, Público [2010], Fleshdance [2012] and Bananas [2013], which are deployed here as processes. The theoretical proportion of this essay is the result of some more significant readings I did over master, readings that informed the ethnographic immersion, influencing my gaze on the field and consequently the meaning of the notes I was making. Its ethnographic portion comes from the notes that I produced over the rehearsals of Público, Fleshdance and Bananas, which I attended weekly, from start to finish, sometimes by looking, sometimes by entering the creative processes, occasionally, when they asked for my considerations. Most of the time I spent on the ground, sitting in a corner of the rehearsal room, silently watching and taking notes, by hand. There were three field notebooks, filled entirely.

The anthropological study of dance is particularly relevant to scholars who work on theories of embodiment and social practice, as well as those concerned with the production of history and ideologies, for dance concerns the deliberate movement of the body across space and in time, and within a particular socio-cultural context. Based on a year and a half of ethnographic research at a pre-professional ballet school in New York City that specializes in teaching the "classical French" form, this study applies an anthropological understanding of ideologies and processes in education to classical forms of ballet. Its analysis of how the ideological system associated with the aesthetics of ballet is created and recreated, in relation to shifting concepts of tradition, suggests that the process of establishing and maintaining institutional boundaries and "sculpting" the bodies of students in the classroom frames the ways that students are related to, and develop relationships with, the ideologies that they encounter. Both the school, as an institution, and individual students are able to navigate and position themselves within the landscape formulated by these ideologies through the development of social networks, the formulation of individual institutional genealogies, and the development and presentation of choreography in selected venues. These processes illustrate the ways in which ideological systems are articulated, developed, and altered in relation to understandings of the human body.

This dissertation analyzes the intellectual and political contributions of choreographer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006). As an African American woman, Dunham broke several barriers of race and gender, first as an anthropologist conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the Caribbean in the 1930s, and second as the artistic director of a major dance company that toured the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia from the 1930s through the 1960s. She also wrote several scholarly books and articles, opened multiple schools, and served on the boards of numerous arts organizations. Although Dunham's contributions to anthropology and dance are vitally important, "Choreographing a New World" emphasizes her political engagement. Through actions both onstage and off, she helped strengthen the transnational ties of black social movements from the New Negro Movement to the Black Power Movement. In particular, the dissertation contends that Dunham made dance one of the primary forces in the creation and perpetuation of the African diaspora. She herself attempted to live diaspora by forging personal connections across racial, linguistic, national, class, and cultural borders. In order to shift the focus to Dunham's intellectual and political engagement, "Choreographing a New World" turns to previously untapped archival sources. This dissertation is the first scholarly work on Dunham to examine archives from the U.S. State Department, Office of Economic Opportunity, Bernard Berenson Papers, Rockefeller Foundation Records, Langston Hughes Papers, and Rosenwald Foundation Papers, among other archives. It combines insights from these archives with choreographic analysis, interviews with Dunham's former dancers and students, and embodied participant-observation research at the annual International Katherine Dunham Technique Seminars from 2010 to 2013. Overall, "Choreographing a New World" not only provides a new perspective on Dunham, but also raises important questions about dance as an intellectual and political activity, especially within an African diasporic context.

This practice-led research enquires into how ideologies of community as commonality have informed the dominant rhetoric in the Community Dance sector since the 1970s, and formed the conditions of possibility for Cross-generational Dance, a reciprocal relationship between discourse and practice that has arguably been overlooked in the historiography of Community Dance. Framed by Michel Foucault’s (1972) concept of the episteme – an umbrella mode of knowing that permeates historical taxonomies – Community Dance history is linked here with experimental choreographic processes during the 1960s and 1970s, and Relational Art of the 1990s. Such relationships suggest a more critical, politically-orientated genealogy. Cross-generational Dance is discussed through a reflexive approach to the writing which reveals how philosophies of community are divided into those associated with the idea of commonality – either through shared characteristics or common goals – and those that advocate a break with these imperatives, here examined through the philosophies of Adriana Cavarero, and Jean-Luc Nancy. Given its perceived agenda to bring people of distinct ages together into a harmonious totality, Cross-generational Dance provides a particular opportunity to discuss community, examined here through case-studies of key choreographers at the time of writing – Rosemary Lee, and Cecilia Macfarlane. The discussion of age is made explicit through an analysis of models of difference, and introduces how an ethical encounter with others can avoid the totalising impulse of community in subsuming these differences. The methodology of ‘relational choreography’ underpins the phenomenological emphasis on process and relationships in choreography over more conventional conceptions of product and form in dance and supports the hypothesis that community can be experienced as ‘being in relation through a phenomenology of uniqueness’. This conception does not rely on polarising the positions of the individual and the community, or self and other, young and old, but rather generates an experience of uniqueness, wherein differences remain unresolved, shared amongst ‘others plural’ (Nancy, 2000). This thesis therefore reconsiders what community means in the context of dance practice.

Between 1890 and 1927, a group of dancers, musicians, and writers converged in Germany, where they founded an artistic movement known as German modern dance. This dissertation provides a history of the origins of this movement and its central figures, including Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, Isadora Duncan, Mary Wigman, Rudolf Laban, Hans Brandenburg, and Valeska Gert. These figures, I show, developed modern dance in an attempt to theorize and transform the social order. With the exception of Gert, this was a social order based upon principles of stability, unity, and consensus, which they developed in performance, pedagogy, and writing through inventive approaches to concepts from Western theatrical music, natural science, philosophy, and politics. Such order, they further demonstrated, could be displayed through the physical movements of the individual dancer, whose dancing body and the knowledge it contained formed a model for the coordinated movement of society. In contrast to many of their contemporaries in artistic and literary modernism, German modern dancers developed what this dissertation labels as “embodied conservatism,” which was an attempt to actively shape society according to principles of physical alignment, harmony, and order. Though embodied conservatism was not a discrete program for politics, by the First World War it became a platform for many issues, ideas, and values of the Weimar political right. Among these issues included questions of human agency and freedom, which dancers such as Wigman and Laban made central to their respective approaches to dance. Though these issues were central to modern dance beginning with Jaques-Dalcroze and Duncan, this dissertation shows how, particularly after 1919, questions about social sovereignty and individual capacity for creative genesis were transformed into questions of national identity perceived as vital to the maintenance of a strong, stable society. This dissertation concludes by arguing that embodied conservatism enabled German modern dancers to conceive of National Socialism as an organic extension of their original vision of social order and harmony.

O que são obras de arte, objetos únicos ou transformações de outras obras. O que a dança faz. O dançarino é quem pensa seu corpo ou é seu corpo que o pensa. Como se dão unidades de movimento, como aparecem, como e onde se fixam. De onde vem o olhar, para onde vai, que funções ou disfunções ele cumpre. Qual o lugar da relação entre intérpretes e espectadores, dissolução ou reformulação dessa fronteira. Pode uma obra de dança ser pensada nos moldes de um ritual, como o define Claude Lévi-Strauss [2011], enquanto uma busca um tanto desenfreada pelo contínuo do vivido em oposição à descontinuidade do pensamento mítico. Quantos corpos cabem num corpo, quantas pessoas podem ser um corpo. Não seria também o processo criativo um vasto ritual de passagem, como o descreve Victor Turner [2005], dançarinos neófitos que se deslocam do mundo social para voltarem a ele transformados, refeitos em corpos outros. Pode a dança ser considerada análoga à poesia, por transformar no corpo o que a poesia transforma na língua. São alguns dos problemas que vou criando ao longo deste ensaio, que é fruto de uma imersão etnográfica no universo dos ensaios do Núcleo Artérias, grupo de dança contemporânea da cidade de São Paulo, dirigido pela coreógrafa Adriana Grechi, com o qual me encontrei um tanto fortuitamente, devido ao interesse primeiro de etnografar processos criativos. Meus interlocutores em campo, além de Adriana, são nove dançarinas e três obras de dança contemporânea, Público [2010], Fleshdance [2012] e Bananas [2013], que são aqui desdobradas enquanto processos. A proporção teórica deste ensaio é fruto de algumas leituras mais significativas que fui fazendo ao longo do mestrado, leituras que passaram a informar a imersão etnográfica a que eu me propunha, influenciando meu olhar em campo e consequentemente o sentido das notas que eu ia fazendo. Sua porção etnográfica provém das notas que fui produzindo ao longo dos processos de Público, Fleshdance e Bananas, que frequentei semanalmente, do início ao fim, ora à distância do olhar ora adentrando os processos criativos, pontualmente, quando elas me pediam considerações. A maior parte do tempo passei no chão, sentado a um canto da sala de ensaios, em silêncio, observando e anotando, à mão. Foram três cadernos de campo inteiros. / What are works of art, unique objects or transformations of other works. What does dance do. Is the dancer who thinks their body or their body thinks the dancer. How do units of movement appear, how and where do they attach. Where does gaze come from, where does it go, what functions or dysfunctions does it meet. What is the place of the relationship between performers and spectators, dissolution or recast of that border. Can a dance work be thought of in terms of a ritual, as defined by Claude Levi-Strauss [2011], while a search somewhat unrestrained for the continuous of living as opposed to the discontinuity of mythical thought. How many bodies fit in a body, how many people can be a body. Is not the creative process also a wide rite of passage, as described by Victor Turner [2005], turning dancers into neophytes who move from social world to get back to it transformed, remade in other bodies. Can dance be considered analogous to poetry, by transforming in the body what poetry transforms in the language. These are some of the problems that create over this essay, which is the result of an ethnographic immersion into the world of the rehearsals of Núcleo Artérias, contemporary dance group from São Paulo, directed by choreographer Adriana Grechi. My interlocutors in the field, besides her, are nine dancers and three works of contemporary dance, Público [2010], Fleshdance [2012] and Bananas [2013], which are deployed here as processes. The theoretical proportion of this essay is the result of some more significant readings I did over master, readings that informed the ethnographic immersion, influencing my gaze on the field and consequently the meaning of the notes I was making. Its ethnographic portion comes from the notes that I produced over the rehearsals of Público, Fleshdance and Bananas, which I attended weekly, from start to finish, sometimes by looking, sometimes by entering the creative processes, occasionally, when they asked for my considerations. Most of the time I spent on the ground, sitting in a corner of the rehearsal room, silently watching and taking notes, by hand. There were three field notebooks, filled entirely.

My Year as a Choreographer analyzes the art and craft of dance choreography. My training as a theatre and dance student at East Tennessee State University from 2010-2014, culminated in my final senior capstone experience as a choreographer for two productions, the ETSU Division of Theatre and Dance’s 2014 Dance Concert and University School’s musical, Sleepy Hollow. Composing a new dance in a concert setting and choreographing for musical theatre provided significant material for analysis, and the following research compares the two processes. In addition, the research of the history and development of dance choreography and its modern practices created a better understanding of the artistic field. Both in theory and in practice, I explored the multitude of artistic responsibilities that are imperative to the process of a choreographer.

Echoes: A Dance Composition and Performance analyzes the creative process of choreographing a dance with aerial elements to convey an emotional narrative. My experiences as a theatre and dance Fine and Performing Arts Honors student at East Tennessee State University from 2013-2017, culminated with my final senior capstone project as director, choreographer, and performer of The Echoing Effect, performed February 9, 2017 at the Bud Frank Theatre. The following research of the history and development of aerial dance as an art-form created a better appreciation of the artistic field and informed how I approached the daunting task of composing expressive dance that seamlessly connected movement from the ground to the air on an aerial apparatus. Through research and practical application, I explored the world of the aerial dance choreographer, and this thesis serves as a record of my journey.