Cette thèse porte sur la conception d'outils numériques interactifs pour les professionnels du design graphique et de la chorégraphie contemporaine. Ces praticiens utilisent des principes et des méthodes personnels qui contraignent et guident leur processus créatif. Je soutiens que, pour construire des logiciels puissants permettant d’étayer leurs pratiques, nous devons les laisser définir et manipuler leur propre ensemble de contraintes créatives. Je présente deux outils qui illustrent cette approche. StickyLines offre des représentations visuelles des contraintes d’alignement et de distribution d’objets graphiques afin de mieux répondre aux besoins des utilisateurs. Knotation permet aux chorégraphes d'esquisser leurs idées et de les rendre interactives, en leur permettant de représenter des contraintes, du mouvement ou une combinaison. Je montre que, bien que leur produit créatif soit de nature fondamentalement différente, le processus créatif de ces professionnels peut être abordé avec une stratégie commune: permettre aux utilisateurs de créer des substrats interactifs qui articulent contenu et contraintes. / This thesis focuses on the design of interactive digital tools for professionals in graphic design and contemporary choreography. These practitioners employ personal principles and methods that constrain and guide their creative process. I argue that to build powerful software tools to support their practice, we need to let them interactively define and manipulate their own set of creative constraints. I introduce two tools that illustrate this approach. StickyLines provides visual representations of alignment and distribution constraints in layout design to better match users’ needs. Knotation allows choreographers to sketch their ideas and make them interactive, letting them represent constraints, movement, or a combination. I show that although their creative product is fundamentally different in nature, these professionals’ creative process can be addressed with a common strategy: Allowing users to create interactive substrates that articulate content and constraints.

This diploma thesis deals with the Prague ballet scene and its important representatives during the second half of the 20th century. The study aims to provide a concise summary of a topic that has not been covered so far and holds great potential for further research. The effort is to capture life stories of several eminent personalities of the ballet scene in the area of dance, choreography and teaching. In addition, the author maps events which had a significant impact on the ballet scene both in terms of theatrical and historical milestones. The chosen problems are approached by using theme-oriented literature reviews and processing of archival documents. The method of oral history is used as part of the research. The contribution of this thesis lies in its concise mapping of the Prague ballet scene and the profession of a ballet artist with all its possible pros and cons. Most importantly, it also serves as commemoration of personalities who had an unforgettable influence on the history of this art form.

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.

Leadership in choreographic processes have not received enough academic attention. An unwillingness and unfamiliarity to use the concept of leadership can be discerned in artistic contexts, despite the impact leadership has on, for example, learning and socialization into the roles of dancers, students, choreographers and teachers. The purpose of this study was therefore to contribute with knowledge about leadership practice in choreographic processes. The study was based on a process-ontological perspective on leadership practice. Such a perspective can encompass many of the desires of decentralizing approaches to leadership/artistry that have emerged through the reading of previous dance theoretical research. The perspective means that leadership is seen as a process, localized to the practice where it occurs through social interactions that, moment-by-moment, generate direction and clearing for action. Clearing for action is to be understood as an action (to clear for action) but also as a space (a clearing for action) from which certain actions becomes more or less possible and/or limited. The direction might be going in different trajectories, in relation to the moment-by-moment clearing for action. The study was based on a qualitative research approach. Four case studies were chosen for examination. Each case corresponded to a choreographic process in a project aimed at creating dance for the stage. Semi-structured interviews were the main method for compiling data. The interview guide was inspired by the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) because leadership, as defined from the chosen perspective, could be clearly studied during critical events. The interviews were conducted with a choreographer and at least one dancer for each case. A deconstruction was made of the critical events identified in the stories of the respective choreographic processes. The definition of leadership was operationalized by examining constructions of positions (constructions of persons or groups based on how they were supposed to be or what they were supposed do), positionings (how the positions related to each other), issues (constructions of issues that directed the attention of the group) and artifacts (constructions of concrete and/or abstract objects) created and adopted through the choreographic processes, as they were narrated. The result was then presented in the form of theoretically substantiated stories that highlighted how these constructions were created and changed through the critical events. One insight based on the results was that resources of different kinds affect the leadership practice that emerged through these choreographic processes.

In the current globalisation of the planet, Indigenous peoples are attempting to reclaim their lands from extraction and natural disruptions due to new sustainable energy projects and dam constructions. This study is exploring how choreography and dance are addressing the issue of exploitation of land and bodies, directly weaving together ideas of ancestry and indigeneity through gathered testimonies from three Indigenous choreographers. The work allows for activist ideas to shift the perspective on humans’ relationship to soil and its emancipation from coloniality by acknowledging the ancestral body as an intrinsic, lived experience within the Indigenous choreographer. Positioning the study in relation to critical artistic practice, the text is proposing an opportunity for the reader to explore the link between bodily rights, minority politics and soil, thus revealing how the reconstruction of ancestral memories and movement can remind us how to repatriate our dismantled and dislocated history. By finding ways of connecting choreography to agency over body and indigeneity, this work is exploring how dance can constitute Indigenous connectedness and how testimonies by these choreographers are passed on through their embodied experiences of indigeneity, ritual, repatriation and recognition of the Indigenous body. / <p>Presentationerna av examensarbetet 31 Maj 2021 skedde på Zoom, online på grund av covid-19</p>

They have lost all hope and behind hope they found new spaces is an essay and a collection of short related texts, written in connection with a similarly named dance piece. It is about dancing joyfully in the age of the climate crisis and trusting that by moving one's own body something else can be moved too.

The purpose of choreographing "Jacob Five: A Journey into the Olive Vineyard" was to artistically express a religious allegory in order to praise God as well as to bring the audience, dancers, and choreographer to a new understanding of the passage from which it was derived. The 39-minute dance was presented April 10, 1993 as a dance fireside. Following the performance, an informal discussion was held to give the audience an opportunity to respond to the dance. These comments were considered and recorded as part of the evaluation of this thesis. Both the thesis and video of "Jacob Five: A Journey into the Olive Vineyard" are available through the Brigham Young University Department of Dance.

I examined how one may establish directorial and choreographic proficiency in the contemporary society of American musical theatre. I did so by completing an examination of five personal observations in my craft. These observations included: (1) Directorship and choreography of Welcome to Vegas, an original jukebox musical; (2) Mentorship on Theatre UCF’s Nine as Assistant Director and Co-Choreographer; (3) Research on the methodologies of various directors and choreographers; (4) Directorship and choreography of Welcome to Broadway, an original jukebox musical; and (5) Assistant to the Program Director of Broadway Theatre Project. I evaluated parallels of my directing and choreography methodologies with those of noted directors and choreographers in the entertainment industry. These industry professionals include famed choreographer Ernest O. Flatt, Ron Field, Hermes Pan, Joe Layton, and Lee Theodore, acclaimed directors Harold Clurman, Dr. Louis E. Catron, and Jon Jory, and prolific director-choreographers Patricia Birch, Donald Saddler, Bob Avian, Bob Fosse, Tommy Tune, and Michael Bennett, as well as Professor Weaver. I have worked for people who believe that experience alone is enough to make one a successful director, choreographer, or director-choreographer. My experience working with and observations of professional directors, choreographers, and director-choreographers, however, has proven that it takes more than experience alone in order to succeed. I predicted the process of establishing my own directorial and choreographic proficiency will stem from a combination of inspiration, mentorship, trial and error, and experience.

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