Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 441-457).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [295]-312).

Queer Transgressions: The choreographing of a male homosexual presence with reference to selected choreographers explores queer identity and in particular representations of a male homosexual presence in dance. Within the methodological framework of dance studies and queer theory I explore the ―self fashioning‖ of my male homosexual presence in dance. This is achieved by critically deconstructing my choreographic process when making choreography. Therefore this thesis is informed by both academic research and my self-reflexive experience of choreography and dance performance. The deconstruction of my autobiography and choreographic process is discussed with reference to both international and South African queer choreographers. This means that by accounting for my own experiences and approaches toward representing a male homosexual presence in dance, I explore the history and engagements of other queer choreographers also creating such representations. I therefore examine the works of selected choreographers and chart the development of the representation of a male homosexual presence in dance. By exploring the choreographic process of other queer choreographers I identify choreographic tactics that queer choreographers are using when making work. From this point of departure I shift the focus away from international queer choreographers and provide insight into the choreographic processes of South African queer choreographers. By accounting for the works and choreographic processes of South African choreographers, I provide a context in which my choreographic explorations on the subject matter can take place. This choreographic exploration manifests itself through a self-reflexive/autobiographic account on the research and practice of my choreographic process. During my choreographic exploration I set the challenge to both engage with and explore further, established ―queering tactics. This is done with the intention to reveal and create representations of a male homosexual presence in dance.

Revising Yeats's rhetorical question, this dissertation asks: "How can we tell the dancer from the music?" In the early twentieth century Isadora Duncan and her barefoot protégées initiated a performance tradition that would later be recognized as American modern dance. They did this, to a great extent, by embodying European "absolute music." Soon, however, choreographers and dancers of this new art form faced modernist calls for medium-specific "absolute dance" that would express movement's autonomy and not the autonomous music of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. As John Martin, one of the nation's first dance critics, wrote in 1933, "There is a long, sad story to be told about the use of music for dancing which was never intended to be danced to." Today that story is even longer; contra Martin, it is not sad. As the use of classical music was a primary component in the earliest forms of "free dance" and as it remains in some of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful modern dance today, this use is in need of critical and historical attention. Tracing an alternative genealogy from Duncan's then-scandalous embodied empathy with sacralized art music, the central chapters of this study of the use of music in American modern dance focus on the lives, works, and reception of two choreographers: Ted Shawn and Merce Cunningham. Both of these men founded his own dance company and created works where choreomusicality, or the relationship between music and dance, remained especially vital. For Shawn, wishing to go even further than Duncan, this meant creating choreographies where dance followed the music as closely as possible. Indeed, in his "music visualizations" (a term that he coined with his wife and colleague Ruth St. Denis) his goal was to create dances that were perfect translations of the music itself. Such translation is ultimately impossible, and in attempting it, I argue, Shawn ended up revealing more of himself--specifically, his desire to perform a non-conventional masculinity that he normally felt was off-limits--than he did of the music. Reacting against this tradition--the standard history of modern dance goes--was Merce Cunningham, in whose mature choreographies music and dance are united only by their overall duration. Yet Cunningham, under the influence of Cage, created several dances to the music of Satie that provide an illuminating exception to this practice. I focus in particular on Idyllic Song (1944) and Second Hand (1970), both of which Cunningham choreographed to Satie's Socrate. Though created during his artistic maturity, Second Hand provides a link to the earliest self-expressive collaborations with John Cage. As a result, this choreography offers an unusual window into the Cage-Cunningham personal and professional relationship. In examining Shawn's and Cunningham's choreography, this dissertation tracks not only the changing role of Western art music in the relatively young art form of modern dance but also examines these choreographers' responses to contemporary attitudes toward the male dancer, unconventional masculinities, and the relatively new identity of the homosexual. In doing so I demonstrate how the choreomusicalities of these men reflected and refracted their masculinities and homosexualities. In addition to providing choreomusical analysis and interpretation, I revise current understandings of both specific scores and choreographies through intensive archival research (from silent films of Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers, which I have synchronized with their unheard music, to Cage-Cunningham manuscripts ignored or previously thought lost), observation of live and recorded rehearsals and performances, and interviews. Ultimately, "The Dancer from the Music" seeks to establish choreomusicality as an exemplary lens through which to view the meeting of music's ineffability with the realities and identities of listening and performing bodies in motion.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This is a photo-documentary study of two themes found within the literature on fabulous appearances: the gay nightclub patron and the club DJ. This study used a large Midwestern gay nightclub as the field setting. Fabulousness involves the way patrons costume themselves in order to communicate status within the setting. This study revealed that participants in the setting utilize three different types of self-presentation. These types embody desirable characteristics and ideas of attractiveness that revolve around power, establishing a normalized “gay” identity, and using surreal based characteristics to achieve their goal of being noticed. The DJs served as informal organizers through their appearances and performances. Analysis of the DJ role found that DJs provide visual cues for other participants in the setting on how to act, dance, dress, and behave. This study is the first in depth examination of the role of the DJ and the communicative processes between the DJ and dancers in gay nightclubs.