KOREAN DANCE AND PANSORI IN D.C.: INTERACTIONS WITH OTHERS, THE BODY, AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY AT A KOREAN PERFORMING ARTS STUDIO

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Files

Publication or External Link

Date

Advisor

Provine, Robert C.

Citation

DRUM DOI

Abstract

This thesis is the result of seventeen months' field work as a dance and pansori student at the Washington Korean Dance Company studio. It examines the studio experience, focusing on three levels of interaction. First, I describe participants' interactions with each other, which create a strong studio community and a women's "Korean space" at the intersection of culturally hybrid lives. Second, I examine interactions with the physical challenges presented by these arts and explain the satisfaction that these challenges can generate using Csikszentmihalyi's theory of "optimal experience" or "flow." Third, I examine interactions with discourse on the meanings and histories of these arts. I suggest that participants can find deeper significance in performing these arts as a result of this discourse, forming intellectual and emotional bonds to imagined people of the past and present. Finally, I explain how all these levels of interaction can foster in the participant an increasingly rich and complex identity.

Notes

Rights