DWELLING: A PERSPECTIVE OF THE IN-BETWEEN

Abstract

Today’s contemporary circus is marked by a merging of embodied practices, including dance, puppetry and clowning. Apart from etymological play on meaning and the corporeal; the mixing, meddling, and swirling of genres not only offers the artist a new way to express sensory experiences, but also engages the artist and the art into a new interdependent relationship with an interactive audience. This research explores how these traditional and contemporary art forms are being interpreted, understood and contextualized. Through a tacit use of phenomenology, the study contributes to a better understanding of the location of embodied practice in dance research and it establishes the interconnectedness between tradition and modernity; past, present, and future; and the exploration of the in-between. Dwelling was an interdisciplinary work performed October 12 and 14, 2018 in the Kogod Theater at the Clarice Performing Arts Center in partial fulfillment of the Master in Fine Arts degree from the University of Maryland, College Park’s School of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies.