This thesis examines two examples of martial dance theatre: Mika HAKA performed by Torotoro (New Zealand), and The Sound of Silence performed by Samudra (India). Both productions were created for international touring, and this thesis looks at their performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (UK). The companies’ choreography integrates native and foreign dance with their hereditary martial arts. These disciplines involve practitioners in displays of prowess that are also entertaining spectacles. They have an expressive dimension that makes them contiguous with dance – a potential that Torotoro and Samudra exploit. The companies address their audiences with combative and inviting movements: Torotoro juxtapose wero and haka (Māori martial rites) with breakdance; Samudra combine kaḷarippayaṭṭu (Kerala’s martial art) with bharatanāṭyam (South Indian classical dance). Their productions interweave local movement practices with performance arts in global circulation, and are often presented before predominantly white, Western audiences. What is created are performances that are generically unstable – the product of cultural interactions in which contradictory agendas converge. In its largest scope, martial dance theatre might include military parades and tattoos, ritual enactments of combat, and folk and classical dance theatre. These performances propagate images of idealised men that create statements of national and cultural identity. They, and the martial disciplines they theatricalise, are also implicated in the performative construction of gender, ethnicity and race. Torotoro and Samudra’s performances, influenced by queer and feminist agendas, offer insights into martial dance theatre’s masculinist potential, and its contribution to the intercultural negotiation of identities. Prominent European theatre practitioners have sought to employ the martial arts to develop Western performers. If these culturally specific disciplines are expressive and performative disciplines, then what are the implications and complications of this transcultural project?

This master's thesis deals with the comparison of the two Czech translations of the book A Stranger Came to the Farm by Mika Waltari. The first translation was made by Vladimír Skalička in 1941 and the second one by Jan Petr Velkoborský in 2005. The thesis is divided into two main parts, a theoretical part and an analysis. The purpose of the theoretical part is to introduce the reader to Mika Waltari, both translators and the original book. I also briefly write about the translation theory. The analysis deals with lots of problems. One of them is the translation of the title and names. I am also interested in creativity of the translators, in the lexical richness of the adaptations and in their mistakes as well. I also show the difference in the approach of literal and free translation. Another big problem this thesis deals with is which text was the source for work of Velkoborský, because in his time there were two Finnish versions with small differences in them and also Skalička's interpretation already existed.

This master's thesis deals with the comparison of the two Czech translations of the book A Stranger Came to the Farm by Mika Waltari. The first translation was made by Vladimír Skalička in 1941 and the second one by Jan Petr Velkoborský in 2005. The thesis is divided into two main parts, a theoretical part and an analysis. The purpose of the theoretical part is to introduce the reader to Mika Waltari, both translators and the original book. I also briefly write about the translation theory. The analysis deals with lots of problems. One of them is the translation of the title and names. I am also interested in creativity of the translators, in the lexical richness of the adaptations and in their mistakes as well. I also show the difference in the approach of literal and free translation. Another big problem this thesis deals with is which text was the source for work of Velkoborský, because in his time there were two Finnish versions with small differences in them and also Skalička's interpretation already existed.

This thesis examines the embodiment of the sexed body and the struggle of fitting into the narrow frames of what a woman is supposed to behave and look like in Japanese cinema. Using the medium of film, I, therefore, seek to produce knowledge regarding the internalized gaze of the oppressor, and self-objectification, caused by the capitalist heteropatriarchy. Thus, I am drawing from cyborg feminism, and the second wave of sexual difference theory’s concept of becoming, expanded upon by the Italian-Australian philosopher Rosi Braidotti. I further use the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of masculine domination and the American philosopher Gayle Rubin’s charmed circle, in creating a theoretical framework, and using the methods of cultural and feminist film analysis to contextualize the films and locate the subjectification of the women. The movies that I will be analyzing are the Japanese director and poet Sion Sono’s Antiporno (アンチポルノ, 2016) and the Japanese director and photographer Mika Ninagawa’s Helter Skelter (ヘルタースケルター, 2012), which both center around two women and their struggle in becoming-cyborg, in relation to power, trauma, sexuality, technology, and beauty ideals in ‘modernized’ Japan. In that sense, I will study the phenomenon of operating outside the lines of social norms of femininity and desire.