Vaudevival: Old is the new New

Abstract

Vaudevival: Old is the new New was an evening-length concert performed October 20th & 21st, 2011 at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in partial fulfillment of the M.F.A. degree in Dance from the University of Maryland's School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies. Vaudevival was a "trad" dance theater project that challenged concepts of aesthetic hierarchies in popular culture. The show ricocheted through twentieth-century vernacular dance to create a vibrant statement about the cyclical nature of art and society, with live music and multi-media projections. This paper is a written account of theoretical and practical problems of identity politics and appropriation that unfolded during the choreographic process. Envisioning a creative utopia free of exploitative hierarchies - both on the stage and on the page, Vaudevival invokes the old to reinvent the new through the intertextuality of American dances, bringing scholarship to the theater, and bringing some theater to scholarship.