abstract: ABSTRACT Moving beyond Form: Communicating Identity through Dance chronicles the journey of investigating my personal creative process in dance. This was a search for strategies to empower myself creatively, enabling me to move beyond the limitations of a prescribed form or style of dance and communicate ideas that were relevant to me. But on a deeper level, it was an exploration of my capacity to self-define through movement. The challenge led me to graduate school, international study with world-renowned choreographers and to the development of a holistic creative practice, Movement to Meaning. The aim of this creative practice is to express internal awareness through movement, thereby enabling the mover to dance from an internal reference point. In my research, I utilized Movement to Meaning to re-contextualize Sandia, a traditional-based dance that is indigenous to various Mande subgroups in West Africa. This project culminated in a choreographic presentation, Ten For Every Thousand, which was performed in October 2010 at the Nelson Fine Arts Center at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.F.A. Dance 2010