Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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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 “EMBRACING THE UNCERTAINTY”: AN EXPLORATORY CASE STUDY OF IMPROVISATION-BASED TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT(2022) Placek, Dale S; Peercy, Megan; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While many education researchers have characterized the impromptu nature of classroom teaching as improvisation, few studies of teacher education or professional development (PD) have examined the potential of improvisation workshops for equipping teachers to face unforeseen classroom moments productively. In this dissertation, I introduced an applied theatrical improvisation framework I call Pedagogical Improvisation (PI), and used it to design, implement, and conduct a qualitative case study of an improvisation-based professional development experience (the PIPD) for a group of nine high school teachers. The research questions were:1. How, if at all, did PIPD participation influence teacher-participants’ attitudes toward, and beliefs about, improvisation and improvisational teaching? 2. How, if at all, did PIPD participation influence teacher-participants’ teaching practices, especially with respect to unforeseen classroom moments? Additionally, during the data analysis process, I added a third research question, based on participating teachers’ responses about the benefits of group participation in the PIPD:3. How, if at all, did the PIPD promote the formation of a Community of Practice for teacher-participants? Findings indicated that, as a result of their PIPD experiences, teacher-participants came to see the role of teacher as a professional improviser more clearly, became more comfortable with uncertainty in both the workshop setting and their classrooms, and experimented with various types of teaching practices related to the PIPD workshop activities and the Elements of Improvisation. Teacher-participants also identified several ways in which the PIPD workshops supported their development of improvisational skills/mindsets, and several constraints that served as obstacles to experimenting with improvisational activities or teaching practices in their classrooms. Beyond their individual reflections and applications of the workshop activities to their classroom, PIPD teachers experienced the benefits of group participation through the Community of Practice that formed as a result of the PIPD workshops. By laughing, playing, and learning together in a workshop setting characterized by psychological safety, teachers also came to see themselves as responsible for creating that type of atmosphere for students in their own classrooms, and experimented with many ways of doing so. This dissertation has implications for research, teaching, teacher education, and professional development, and joins a body of now-quickly-growing research across many fields that supports Tint, McWaters, and Van Driel’s (2015) assertion that applied improvisation is “consistently transformative and successful.” Further, it seeks to respond to their call for “rigorous and structured research to ground the findings in larger, evidence-based processes” (p. 73).Item Reviving the Dead Zone: The Creation and Development of ambiguous gaps(2018) Graham, Jennifer Brooke; Keefe, Maura; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)After identifying a pattern of creating product-driven work and feeling deeply dissatisfied and limited as a result, dance artist Jen Graham committed herself to releasing habit, following her instincts, and trusting the process of unfolding to find a new creative process and create her Master’s thesis work, ambiguous gaps. Launching an investigation into the physical relationships between people through an exploration of the intersections of dance improvisation, jazz dance values, and the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System, Graham endeavored to illuminate the physical and metaphoric gaps which must be navigated to create, shift, and maintain connection. This text details her journey through inspiration, research, creation, performance, and reflection.Item The Status of Instruction in Composition in Elementary General Music Classrooms of MENC Members in the State of Maryland(2008-05-05) Phelps, Kerry Bowman; Silvey, Philip; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to examine the status of composition activities in elementary level general music classrooms in the state of Maryland. Participants (N=60) completed an online questionnaire with questions in the areas of teacher demographics, beliefs about composition, and frequency of composition activities in the classroom. Responses indicated that composition was present, at a low frequency, at all student grade levels. Relationships were found between student grade level and structure of composition activity and student grade level and group structure of composition activity. Implications of the frequency of composition activities as well as relationships found for music education are discussed. Suggestions are made for increasing the frequency of composition activities by building upon the most common practices identified by this study.Item Bit of nostalgia... for one or two percussionists and live electronics performer(2006-04-30) Boyd, Michael; DeLio, Thomas; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Bit of nostalgia is a work for one or two percussionists and a live electronics performer that explores performer creativity through a graphic score and investigates the ways that the objects performers interact with (instruments) shape their actions/performances. The percussionist(s) take an active role in designing the stage set-up for each performance by superimposing a grid on the performance space, and filling at least half of the sectors with combinations of instrument-types listed in the piece's instructions (including objects made of metal, wood, glass, paper, plastic, and stone). Each sector that contains groups of instruments also contains a music stand holding three of eighteen closely related score pages. The similarities inherent in the various score pages requires that performers frequently reinterpret quasi-redundant visual materials with greatly varying groups of instruments (and objects), emphasizing the differences between each instrument group. While the performance proceeds, another performer interprets the same score using Cycling 74's MAX/MSP (software that accomplishes real-time sound synthesis and processing) to process and playback sound segments from recordings of previous rehearsals and/or performances. To accomplish this, the computer performer utilizes some or all of nine MAX/MSP patches (single windows containing a user designed graphical interface) of my design that incorporate differently controlled ring modulation, filtering, and delay in isolation or various combinations. The percussionists directly respond to these sounds as well as each other while interpreting certain pages of the score that contain the letters I, O, and T (signifying imitate, oppose, and transform respectively). These letters direct the performers to address sounds/actions produced by the other performer, themselves, or the electronics through their interpretations. Through these interactions, I hope to bring a sense of self-history into the piece and create an interesting notion of depth which reflects a broader perspective of what constitutes a "work." Whereas one typically thinks of an artwork as a fixed entity such as a score, I am trying to overtly link and interconnect otherwise marginalized and disparate aspects that contribute to the totality of this piece such as rehearsals and performances.