UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
Browse
10 results
Search Results
Item FLYING UP AND FALLING DOWN: QUEER PHENOMENOLOGY, CYBORGS, QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT, AND TENSEGRITY IN MATERIAL BODY 01 + PULSE: AN ANTI-DISCIPLINARY PERFORMANCE OF DANCE AND TECHNOLOGY(2024) Ford, Mary Kate; Portier, Kendra; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis examines Material Body 01 + Pulse, a live performance merging dance and technology through the lenses of queer phenomenology, cyborg embodiment, tensegrity, and quantum entanglement. By destabilizing and reimagining conventional notions of boundaries, materials, machines, symbols, and ecological systems the choreography invites audiences to engage with diverse embodiments and perceptions. The integration of elements that blur boundaries between human and machine foreground the cyborg as a site of transformation and active engagement in systemic surroundings. The choreographic manipulation of tension embodies the dynamic equilibrium of tensegrity, generating interconnectedness. Through analysis of the choreographic process, this thesis highlights how Material Body 01 + Pulse intersects contemporary dance with emergent technologies and theoretical frameworks, offering new perspectives on embodiment, identity, and spatiality in the digital era.Item LAST DANCE, LOST DANCE: STRATEGIZING INDETERMINACY TOWARD LIVE AND EMERGENT CHOREOGRAPHIES(2023) Villanueva, Carlo Antonio Ortega; Keefe, Maura; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Last Dance, Lost Dance is a 30-minute interdisciplinary performance piece that explores the concept of indeterminacy in performance. Indeterminacy—the phenomenon of a performer making decisions during performance—is a reifying analytical perspective from which dance improvisation can be seen, applied, and understood. Instinctively directed and choreographed by Carlo Antonio Ortega Villanueva, Last Dance, Lost Dance resists the fixity of choreographic form in pursuit of relational, responsive collaborations in performance strategy and (interdisciplinarily) with theater design. To do so, Last Dance, Lost Dance reschedules choreography to include the moment of performance, through the use of improvisational strategies; and reconfigures choreography to include the design and movement of mise en scène. As a result, Last Dance, Lost Dance commands the full apparatus of the theater despite its imposed rubrics for form, beauty, and aesthetic; and its choreography emerges in real time, authored live by its performers. These experimental modes of choreography ask and dance the question: “What is the relationship between form and possibility?” This document, “Last Dance, Lost Dance: Strategizing Indeterminacy Toward Live and Emergent Choreographies,” supports and contextualizes Last Dance, Lost Dance with discussions of dance and the archive, Asian American postmodern performance, and photographic and narrative documentation of the creative research, development, and critical reflections of Last Dance, Lost Dance; it is accompanied by an archival video of the performance.Item Finally, Fairies!: A Study in Hauntological Choreography(2022) Koepke, Tristan; Portier, Kendra; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Finally, Fairies!: A Study in Hauntological Choreography” is the written thesis that documents the creative research, development, and critical reflection of my dance production Finally, Fairies!, a requirement of the M.F.A. in Dance at the University of Maryland, College Park. Finally, Fairies! premiered March 11-13, 2022, at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center's Dance Theatre. In outlining the process from ideation to performance, I illuminate my personal history and artistic lineage in dance performance and choreography. I consider my choreographic impulses and choices in relationship to hauntology, a concept given name by Jacques Derrida and expanded upon by contemporary theorists such as Mark Fisher, Jack Halberstam, and Merlin Coverley. I explore hauntological moods, methodologies, Vaporwave music, and emergent forms of composition that involve both improvisation and choreography. Ultimately, I offer close readings of Finally, Fairies! to further expose what the performance proposed, as well as develop and trouble formulations of presence and embodiment through an insistence on spectrality and indeterminacy.Item Of Flesh and Feathers: A Study of Artistic Labor and the Politics of the Sensuous in New York Neo-Burlesque(2020) Fallica, Elisabeth T.; Frederik, Laurie; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation presents an ethnographic study of the neo-burlesque scene in New York City, a group of nightlife artists who perform theatrical striptease. Based on fieldwork conducted from 2015 to 2018, this study uses the lens of labor to explore issues of art making, aesthetics and materiality. Specifically, it focuses on the artistic labor of performers on and off the stage; how the concept of labor is evoked in performance; and the work of material objects on stage. Looking at labor in relationship to neo-burlesque hopes to advance discussions on costume and materiality, the artist’s relationship to concepts of work, and artistic process. In doing so, this project also seeks to broaden the scope of previous scholarship on burlesque and erotic performance that more often than not has read such performance as either oppressive or empowering. I begin by providing a contemporary history of the neo-burlesque scene in New York, a scene that emerged in the 1990s at late night parties and strip clubs, among performance artists and strippers. I then analyze the heated, emotional choreography in contemporary burlesque acts and consider its relationship to Post-Fordist work modes. In my discussion of neo-burlesque performance I also analyze the active role of costume, arguing that burlesque costumes are actants that cue performers choreographic choices. Finally, I offer an embodied approach to understanding the artistic practices of neo-burlesque in the classes offered through The New York School of Burlesque, illuminating the DIY ethos that undergirds the community.Item COLONIAL CHOREOGRAPHY: STAGING SRI LANKAN DANCERS UNDER BRITISH COLONIAL RULE FROM THE 1870s – 1930s(2018) Madamperum Arachchilage, Sudesh Mantillake; Lee, Esther K; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In textbooks the terms “Kandyan dance” and its equivalent in the Sinhala language “udarata nätuma” are used to describe the dance tradition that was predominantly practiced in the Kandyan region of Sri Lanka. Nationalist histories portray Kandyan dance as a continuation of a pristine tradition that was passed down from ancient Sinhala kingdoms. As the Sinhala nationalist discourse glorified Kandyan dance vis à vis its Tamil counterpart, it obscured the British colonial encounter with Kandyan dancers by leaving out a part of the rich history of dance. As I demonstrate in this dissertation, colonialism transformed to a significant extent the Kandyan dancescape of the British colonial period, particularly between the 1870s and 1930s. Therefore, this dissertation re-examines the history of the so-called tradition of Kandyan dance with the focus on the British colonial encounter with performers of the Kandyan region. As a Sri Lankan dancer, I try to trace and interpret the histories of dancers that were ignored or shrouded in silence in colonial and Sinhala national histories. As a historian, I interpret archival materials through textual and visual analysis while as a dancer, I interpret archival materials through my embodied knowledge of Kandyan dance. I examine: How did the Sinhalese devil dance become a showpiece during the British colonial period, setting the ground for it to be elevated with the new name of “Kandyan dance”? Who defined its aesthetic parameters and repertoire? How did the performers respond to their colonial experience? I argue that, with the help of the native elites, the colonizers displaced, mobilized, manipulated, staged, and displayed performers of the Kandyan region for the benefit of colonial audiences through processions organized for British royal dignitaries, colonial exhibitions, photographs, and travel films. I call this process “colonial choreography”, which defined the aesthetic parameters and repertoire of Kandyan dance. However, the dancers were not just the victims of colonial choreography but also contributors to colonial choreography through their creativity and resistance. Therefore, I also argue that while collaborating with the colonizers, the dancers responded creatively to their experience and covertly resisted the colonial masters.Item Pleated(2014) Miracle, Stephanie Danielle; Pearson, Sara; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Pleated, rich in technicolor, full of imagination and wistfulness woven together with sincere characters, raw relationships, and a rock-n-roll soundtrack, is a piece about family, memory, and place. Pleated reverses the Dance Theatre of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and inhabits this odd space by dancing in front, inside, and on top of this tall vertical wall of folded red, purple, and gray theatre seats. Costumes in crayon box colors react sharply against the strange backdrop. The clashing gives off a vibrant burst of energy, reminiscent of a messy, adolescent bedroom. A non-linear narrative unfolds slowly, following three sisters as they revisit moments of their past together. The dance shifts seamlessly through a series of vignettes, which culminate in an emotionally volatile scene of accusation and forgiveness.Item The Making of Visible Seams(2014) Crawley-Woods, Erin Rose; Widrig, Patrik; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Visible Seams is a roving tapestry of movement and sound that flows up staircases, rolls down hallways, perches in windows and poses in the courtyards of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. Inspired by the films of Busby Berkeley and the expanse and elegance of the Center's common areas and corridors, I partnered architecture with choreography to create a journey of shifting perspectives for the audience. Sound and video installations displayed in the weeks preceding and following the performance foreshadowed and echoed the dance, encouraged a more fully sensual experience of the venue, and returned the ideas borrowed from Berkeley back to a recorded medium. This document is a chronology of the creative process of this work and charts the course from inspiration to collaboration, performance, and reflection. It serves as a record of the ins and outs, ups and downs, why and wherefores of creating a site-specific performance event.Item In|And|Of|Through(2012) Durham, Valerie; Phillips, Miriam; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In|And|Of|Through was a thesis concert performed March 8-9, 2012 at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in partial fulfillment of an M.F.A. in Dance through the University of Maryland. In|And|Of|Through contemplates man's relationship to art and the embodiment of visual art through application of basic dance principles espoused by pioneering modern dancer Isadora Duncan to aesthetics from Asian artwork in the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art. This paper is a written account of the choreographic investigations and creative processes that formed the concert, including foundational concepts of Duncan dance technique, research on Asian artworks, and explorations into the cycle of visual art inspiration and physical embodiment. Included is a detailed account of how the concert re-conceptualized Duncan's classical repertoire, fashioned contemporary choreographies from historical resources, and incorporated a community of diverse dancers, live onstage painting, and an abstract gallery setting to explore different effects art has on the human spirit.Item Tie Shopping With My Father(2008) Iacono, Kathrine; Rosen, Meriam; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Tie Shopping with My Father is a five section dance thesis created to explore the sport of wrestling and how its influences on my life have affected my movement as a dancer. Researched for three years, the culmination of the project happened on September 25 and 26, 2008 and included five sections that explored loss, mannerisms of warm-up, relationships, biographical connection to the sport, and its spiritual implications. The results included a broadened sense of responsibility to provide honest, risk-taking art and a heightened knowledge of the sport of wrestling for the arts public.Item Making Dance That Matters: Dancer, Choreographer, Community Organizer, Public Intellectual Liz Lerman(2004-04-27) Traiger, Lisa; Bradley, Karen; DanceWashington, D.C.-based choreographer and dancer Liz Lerman, a MacArthur Award recipient, has been making dances of consequence for 30 years. Her choreography, her writing and her public speaking tackle "big ideas" for the dance field and society at large. Lerman articulates those ideas as questions: "Who gets to dance? Where is the dance happening? What is it about? Why does it matter?" This thesis investigates how Lerman has used her expertise as a choreographer, dancer and spokesperson to propel herself and her ideas beyond the tightly knit field into the larger community as a public intellectual. A brief history and overview defines public intellectual, followed by an examination of Lerman's early life and influences. Finally, three thematic areas in Lerman's work -- personal narrative, Jewish content and community-based art -- are explored through the lens of three choreographic works: "New York City Winter" (1974), "The Good Jew?" (1991) and "Still Crossing" (1986).