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What? Do I look like this? : A qualitative study of mirrors’ impact on contemporary dance pedagogy students’ experiences of themselves

The purpose of this study was to describe how mirrors affect contemporary dance pedagogy students’experiences of themselves. Empirical material was collected through semi-structured interviews with four dance pedagogy students at the School of Dance and Circus, and analyzed with the help of post-humanistic perspective and Lacanian mirror stage theory. The results suggest that mirrors are active agents that participate in several things, for example they create an evaluating gaze, objectification, alienation from the subject as a unity, experience of two-dimensional bodies and distraction. The results also suggest that the mirrors actively create afront and direction, and therefore they shield dancers from sensing their ‘inner selves’ as well as others in theroom, time and space. The feeling of success and mood affect the way dancers feel about their mirror images and themselves. In summary, this study stresses that the mirror, an object, is active and agentic, instead of thinking that the dancer is the only active part in the dancer-mirror relationship.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uniarts-351
Date January 2018
CreatorsKella, Greta
PublisherStockholms konstnärliga högskola, Institutionen för danspedagogik
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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