Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1975. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1981. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 119).

The interpretation and performance of literature is a theatre art in which literary texts are transformed into staged productions. Novelists, poets, playwrights, and essayists use the symbols of written language to create an imagined world for their readers; interpretative performers present their audiences with this world through symbols of both speech and movement. Hence the interpretation and performance of literature incorporates a wide range of literary and performance theory. Unfortunately, little is known about how literary texts can be communicated through symbolic movement. The purpose of this study, then, is to propose principles of stylized movement which would be useful to the interpretative performer of literature. To develop these principles, Martha Graham's choreographic use of classical tragedy was investigated. Using a decriptive methodology based on Aristotle's elements of tragedy, four of Graham's ballets were analyzed in view of their literary sources: Cave of the Heart from Euripides' Medea, Night Journey from Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Clytemnestra from Aeschylus' The Oresteia, and Cortege of Eagles from Euripides' Hecuba and The Trojan Woman. As a result of this investigation, five principles emerged. Stated as descriptions of Graham's work, the principles are: (1) rhetoric shapes the form, (2) movement vocabularies are created, (3) synecdochical movement is expanded over time, (4) stage properties assume multiple meanings through movement, and (5) costumes expose movement and indicate character. By using these principles as guidelines, the interpretative performer may understand, create, and utilize stylized movement that communicates the ideas, images, and actions inherent in the text being staged.

Orientador: Renato Ferracini / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Artes / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-16T18:20:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Peter_CarolineSilveira_M.pdf: 1050767 bytes, checksum: 65f53ab53b6563fb4924d45b8a44143d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Resumo: A presente dissertação visa a contribuir para a discussão acerca dos procedimentos técnicos para a formação do ator-bailarino. Para tanto, estuda duas propostas formativas de corpo-em-arte, Dança Moderna/Martha Graham e o método de trabalho desenvolvido pelo Lume - Núcleo de Pesquisas Interdisciplinares de Teatro da Unicamp. Também identifica e descreve os princípios norteadores destas duas práticas, correlacionando-os para, assim, analisar as possibilidades de semelhanças existentes entre os mesmos. A partir de experiência prática com ambas as técnicas, especulou-se que pudessem existir princípios comuns entre ambas e relações entre os trabalhos técnicos desenvolvidos, apesar dos resultados cênicos serem diferenciados, não se constituindo como objetos de interpretação neste estudo. Desse modo, foi analisada a possibilidade de diálogo existente entre alguns princípios que compõem o fazer prático dessas propostas, tomando como ponto de partida o trabalho de campo realizado com Carlos Simioni, fundador do Lume, e com Nair Moura, professora de dança moderna e discípula de Cecy Frank / Abstract: The present study aims at contributing to the discussion concerning the technical procedures for the formation of the actor-dancer. In order to do that, it analyzes two formative proposals of body-in-art, Modern Dance/Martha Graham and the method of work developed by LUME - Nucleus of Interdisciplinary Research on Theater from Unicamp. It also identifies and describes the principles of these two practices, correlating them for, thus, analyzing the possibilities of similarities between them. From the practical experience with both techniques, it was speculated that there could exist common principles between both and relations between the technical works developed, although the scenic results are different and do not constitute an object of interpretation in this study. This way, it was analyzed the possibility of dialogue between some principles that compose the practical aspect of these proposals, having as a starting point the field work carried out along with Carlos Simioni, founder of LUME, and with Nair Moura, teacher of modern dance and Cecy Frank's disciple / Mestrado / Artes / Mestre em Artes

My dissertation examines mass movement and dancing choruses as forms that proliferated across national, political, and artistic boundaries during the interwar period. Bringing together diverse professional and amateur dance practices such as German movement choirs, American and Soviet pageantry, Busby Berkeley films, and early Martha Graham, I analyze how concepts of unity, precision, and futurity operated within the shared mass movement aesthetics but divergent politics of the United States, Germany, and Soviet Russia. While these forms have been examined by dance scholars as individual phenomena or in their national settings, there has been no full-length comparative study that encompasses this range of forms of dance and national and political ideologies. I argue that form does not predetermine a politics; rather, forms gain political significance through use and interpretation by artists and spectators with political and ideological perspectives—sometimes overt, sometimes implicit. Furthermore, the relationship among the individuals within a group and whether and how they relate to a leader is indicative of how the group participates in politics. I examine the development of German movement choirs and their association with political movements in Weimar and Nazi Germany; I pay special attention to the leftist movement choir activity of Martin Gleisner and Jenny Gertz, figures not well-known in English-language scholarship. I compare Soviet mass spectacles and American leftist dance, both of which were influenced by the Pageantry Movement, and argue that the artists’ political relation to the state impacted what kinds of futurity they could imagine. To argue that the precision chorus line was a site that produced and contested ideals of American womanhood, I bring together the Radio City Rockettes, the chorus in the all-Black film Harlem is Heaven (1932), and Busby Berkeley’s Dames (1934). Finally, I analyze Martha Graham’s all-female 1930s company alongside her political work Chronicle (1936) to discover connections between the company’s social visions and how the choreographed work implicated spectators in a collective future. My project contributes to the dance historical field by bringing together a broad range of artistic and cultural phenomena that are more often found within their national or genre boundaries. By connecting these sites of inquiry through archival research and analysis of textual and visual materials, I show that the political identity of a mass or chorus develops from the particular way that the individuals within the group relate to one another, to any leader present or imagined, and to the constituted outside of the group. In making these arguments, I seek to make dance history part of a larger social history of aesthetics and politics.