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Item Open Access The Audience Focus: An Analysis of Audience Inclusion as a Methodolgy for Creating Contemporary Choreography(2014-07-09) Gianforcaro, Patrizia Antonella; Callison, Darcey B WThis extended analysis essay investigates audience inclusion in contemporary dance, both during the creation process and in performance. The essay argues that this methodology is effective in furthering audience engagement and development involving project-based dance companies in Toronto. This method of inclusivity bridges the audience-to-artist relationship, and creates an important connection between the audience, performers, and choreographer. The main objectives of this methodology are: to utilize audience feedback to stimulate creative impetus, to challenge the artists exploration, to learn about ones audience, to inspire audiences to become reflective spectators rather than passive spectators, and to attract a wider audience base for contemporary dance in Toronto. The results of this research have been successful in accomplishing the set goals, and this study has lead to further ideas of implementing this methodology in schools and theatres as an audience development initiative for contemporary dance.Item Open Access Body-Draping: Using Costume and Movement as Choreographic Tools in the Creative Process and Choreographic Outcomes(2015-08-28) Harvey, Sharon C.; Cash, SusanCostuming is an invaluable tool in visual communication and for setting the mood of the story for an audience. This extended essay is about using costumes and movement as choreographic tools in the creative process and performance outcomes. The development is used to deepen and support contemporary movement language through the use of fabric manipulation. For example, this process focuses on how to create movement from fabric, in order to create costuming that connects to the meaning of the movement. The process looks at how costuming brings out the physicality of the dancer’s character. The developments of choreography and movement invention in dance are discussed in this essay as a means of developing an extended movement vocabulary, which is exposed within three case studies in the contemporary choreography and dance dramaturgy curriculum, that are rooted in the African values as a way of deepening the expression of its society.Item Open Access Choreographic Play: Investigating Dynamic Choreographic Engagement with all Bodies(2016-09-20) Silagy, Michelle Ann; Anderson, CarolChoreographic Play: Investigating Dynamic Choreographic Engagement with all Bodies is informed by the burgeoning trend to include multi-ability bodies in the practice of contemporary dance. An important aspect of this research addresses inclusivity whereby improvisational methods and choreographic processes can be infused within communities comprised of all abilities of all populations of people. The goal of my research has been to originate improvisational and choreographic processes and choreography that can be experienced and understood by all who take part in it. This research considered ways to share both processes and performative aspects of choreography by utilizing a practice-based methodology in the creation of three choreographic case studies. These are, first the I Am solo project entitled at the end of a stem, second, a self-produced project (RE)Trace and finally, Snowlight. These case studies represent the containers where activated investigations are magnified and/or realized.Item Open Access Choreographic Research Combining Contact Improvisation and the Alexander Technique: Somatic, Practice-Based-Research, and Ethnographic Inquiry(2017-07-27) Liska, Suzanne Ruth; Alcedo, Russ PatrickSomatic practices, practice-based-research (PBR) and ethnography contextualize this choreographic research that moves from the studio/stage to the desk. My project investigates how integrating the Alexander Technique (AT) and Contact Improvisation (CI) principles, combined with theoretical studies in PBR and ethnography expand psychophysical coordination for dancers, teachers, researchers and choreographers. I primarily ask: What theoretical and methodological principles guide my dance research in order to move beyond teaching dance technique or choreographing a piece? To address my inquiries, I choreographed, danced and taught with dance artists from Canada, Japan, Europe, and the USA. The culmination of my research offers a new dance methodology to facilitate the multiple internal/external awareness necessary for an embodied choreographic process.Item Open Access Choreographing for Children's Television: The Legwarmers in Variations on a Dream(2019-07-02) Brkich, Lisa Joanne; Callison, DarceyIn Choreographing for Childrens Television: The Legwarmers in Variations on a Dream, choreographer Lisa Brkich explores the choreographic process for a demographic of children between the ages of four and seven years through embodied practice with the dancers, and through the collaboration process with her production team, media company Images Made Real, visual artist Emma Smith and composer Erik Geddes. In this work, Brkich explores the medium of television and its relationship to choreography for viewers in the primary years, kindergarten to grade two. Choreography for this project is cultivated as a tool to increase the imagination of the viewer, introducing dance to this age group as a form of communication through storytelling. Discussions of the choreographic process of this work depict the choreography, created in the studio during rehearsals, as well as the choreographic changes that arise when influenced by the filming process.Item Open Access Choreographing the Cyborg: IM-Mortal(2020-08-11) Colalillo, Emilio Michael; Cash, SusanIn IMMORTAL, choreographer Emilio Colalillo examines the superior effect of choreographing movements with technology seen through projection mapping and video projections. It is known as spatialized augmented reality or 3-dimensional (3D) projection mapping, in live dance theatre. Specifically, to examine the effect of this modality, this thesis focuses on the evolution of humankind, a posthuman. This research will prove the success in bringing fantasy to reality to create a posthumanistic world through the use of technology, aesthetics and choreography in live theatre. The thesis examines how to augment reality through the illusion of 3D projections on stage with dancers. With the correlation of music and choreography, the augmented reality stimulates the illustrative and visual meaning. The results show that spatialized projections and projection mapping produces greater 3D existence, expanding to additional layers of depth. With projections on the cyclorama, dancers, scrim and the illusion of holographic images, creates what is argued as a 4-Dimensional (4D) effect. The technology has an interactive quality with the dancers that augment reality and bring the imaginary and fantastical to live theatre, creating a futuristic experience.Item Open Access Choreographing the Non-Ephemeral:An Investigation of Cyclical Temporality Using Minimalist Dance(2022-12-14) Sunthoram, Ashvini; Jimenez, JenniferThis thesis is a philosophical and performative investigation of the embodied practice of cyclical temporality used in Indian classical music and dance, called taala, including an argument against the ontological specificity of dance as ephemerality. Extending on cyclical phenomena in Indian thought, the temporal structure in Indian classical music and dance is both linear and cyclical, constructing a unique perception of time as a living entity. Through minimalist movement composition, choreographic exploration and the development of a dance work called Art of Time, I worked to support the arguments of taala and its entity-driven definition of time. By challenging the interpretation of time flowing linearly in my choreography, my discussion aims to transcend normative framings of time, body, and presence as seen in Western scholarship and dance writing, specifically liberating dance from its diagnosed ephemerality.Item Open Access Creating Contemporary Choreography through the Post-Traumatic Lens(2014-07-09) Forcier, Marie-France; Anderson, CarolAs a professional Canadian dancer-choreographer, I have recently observed unpremeditated elements of dissociation arising in my choreography. This has led me to question the possible links between my history of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and my recent choreographic practice, and to speculate on how the embodiment of trauma as a material-generating source and a lens for staging dances may inform the choreographic praxis. My practice-based Master of Fine Arts research focused on developing and analysing my choreography from a PTSD point of view. Over the course of three distinct creative processes, I have tracked emerging insight on the potential and pitfalls inherent to developing choreography from places of traumatic memory, and how those vary from context to context in regards to performers’ level of training and group sizes. This led me to devise what I now understand to be the basic constants of trauma-based choreography and its necessary considerations.Item Open Access Cultivating Roots: A Tensional-Hybrid Investigation of Embodied Resources through Traditional Cretan Folkloric and Contemporary Dance Practices(2018-09-19) Markakis, Nikolaos; Mackwood, William J.In Cultivating Roots, emerging dance artist Nikolaos Markakis investigates choreographic creations through his two embodied resources of Cretan folkloric and Contemporary dance practices. These two embodied resources were questioned and challenged through the lenses of tradition and tensional-hybrid art, a term he has been exploring through his three case studies: Ithaka, Ariadne, and Metaxy. In these case studies Markakis delves into his embodied resources, and investigates influences through the folkloric and contemporary themes of costume, music, and dance. Furthermore, this extended essay questions the role that cultural traditions can play within a contemporary choreography for the Toronto dance scene. Playing with the emotional, political and aesthetic tensions between Markakis embodied resources; he researched the possibility of a successful and organic approach to marry these two worlds for the stage.Item Open Access Dancing Cultural Memory: Three Contemporary Choreographies Informed by a Migrant Embodiment of "Home"(2014-07-28) Mata Soledad, Maria Victoria; Small, HollyThis paper analyzes how memory is performed through the creation of three contemporary dance-based choreographies: Lejania (Distant), Memory Lane and ImShift. Influenced by Afro-Venezuelan movement and contemporary dance, I explore specific locations where memory is stored in the body. All three choreographic case studies have pronounced motifs of white cloth, partial nudity, shadows and percussive rhythms. This analysis spring boards from leading scholars that write about issues of embodiment, cultural memory and diasporic performance such as Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Diana Taylor, Coco Fusco and Gloria Anzaldua. The dynamic movement vocabulary creates a body bilingualism that draws from the dancers’ personal lives and each author’s issues of living in the margins of mainstream society, belonging and challenging Latin American immigrant stereotypes. This paper examines the historical knowledge and shared sense of identity that is embodied and expressed in the performances.Item Open Access Dancing in the Diaspora: An Investigation of Contemporary Indian Dance Practices(2018-09-19) Suresh, Suma; Cash, SusanMy research focus is to develop my own personal choreographic voice by contextualizing and investigating the works of three contemporary Indian dance choreographers in the diaspora who have trained in the classical dance form of Bharatanatyam-Anita Ratnam, Hari Krishnan and Shobana Jeyasingh. The three dance practitioners, although with similar backgrounds, have embarked on three different creative routes and reached different destinations in terms of cultural and artistic productions. My research is directed to understanding how they have adapted the embodied knowledge of this classical dance form to create a contemporary dance language through their works. I will gather this knowledge and channel my findings to inform my own work as an emerging contemporary dance artist. Through a practice-led research producing three new dance works, I will activate my research findings and incorporate them into my evolving choreographic process.Item Open Access Emancipating the Dancing Body: Bridging the Interdependency of Aesthetic Theory with Separated Roles in Contemporary Dance to Solidify the Phenomenology of Creative Movement Causation(2021-07-06) Vintila, John Michael; Olafson, FreyaThis thesis involves the development of a methodology that when assessed hermeneutically, provides an existential yet accessible framework that informs and deepens the practice of improvised contemporary movement forms. This theoretical methodologys construction also initiates a unique aesthetic theory that can be used for solidifying an improvisational creative process. The unveiling of concealed convergences eventually resonates with dancing bodies as the becoming of the unseen through a phenomenological grounding that performers using improvised movement structures have ostensibly disregarded as being the forgotten trance in dance. Through the interpolation of topics and concepts exclusive to the fields of political theory, aesthetics, philosophy and hermeneutics, selected segments from works by prominent thinkers from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel through Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty are deconstructed to inform the eventual reasoning of how an emancipated dancing experience might come to exist.Item Open Access Embodying Kinaesthetic Stimulants in a Technological World, A Kinaesthetic Exploration of Western Technology's Affect on the Body(2014-07-09) McClelland, Michelle Darlene Grace; MacWood, WilliamThis thesis addresses the potential kinaesthetic influences technology has on the body and how these influences can be used to extract original choreography. Based on Gretchen Schiller’s assertions that the body’s interactions with technology “contribute to the range of one’s movement repertoire and kinaesthetic condition” (Schiller 109), this research purports that the body’s interactions with transportation technology (specifically trains, subways, and automobiles), hand-held technology (cell phones, video games, and electronic children’s toys), online networking, and the television, affect its kinaesthetic condition. This is achieved through the body’s experience of new shapes, tensions, and weight-holding patterns. The individual experiences of urban Western bodies are specifically researched, particularly those in Toronto, Canada. Through site-specific movement explorations, this thesis argues that a heightened kinaesthetic awareness allows a choreographer to extract technological qualities and create original choreography. This process will, in turn, widen the choreographer’s awareness to other kinaesthetic movement inspirations.Item Open Access Enhancing the Performer's Experience of Absorption through the Choreographic Process and Structure(2014-07-09) Levin, Ruth Naomi; Anderson, CarolThrough the creation of three dance works over the course of the second year of my MFA research, I explored the question of how the process and structure of a choreography could enhance the experience of absorption (bliss, focus) for the performer. The factors that most notably had an effect on this experience were: relationship, most strongly the relationship between performers but also the relationship of the performer(s) to myself as director and the relationship of performer(s) to the environment and objects, both imagined and real; the nature of the imagery employed and the transpersonal emotional bridge it can facilitate between performer and audience; the nature, wording and rate of direction given to the performer; and increasing specificity and structure to build complexity and energy.Item Open Access In Flight: Contemporizing Winged Motifs in Philippine Folk Dance for the Canadian Stage(2021-07-06) Alcedo, Paulo Perez; Cash, SusanThis thesis is a choreographic and filmic exploration of contemporizing selected Philippine folk dances that have winged motifs. It examines dance rehearsals as a site for ethnographic research. Metaphors of birth, growth, life, immigration, struggle, failures, resilience, and hope will be manifested and expressed. The output of this research is a dance film. Titled In Flight, it critically responds to themes of isolation, limited movements, the precarity of flight, restricted travel, acts of transferring from one place to another, and the ways in which dance artists adapt to quarantined movements of life. Its aim is to identify an increased knowledge of natural movement of the avian species paralleled or in discussion with how humans translate the naturally occurring movements of birds into human expressions and dances.Item Open Access Intertextuality and Identity: An Examination of Dramaturgy for Dance Through the Remounting Process(2014-07-09) Ottmann, John Joseph; Callison, Darcey B. W.This research thesis focuses on remounting existing dance choreographies. It reveals a shift from traditional notions of the choreographer as a figure of centralized authority to a decentralized model of collaborative exploration. Questions raised throughout this investigation are: How are the outcomes of choreographic remounting affected by defining the place of imitation in the process? How can the artist's creative voice remain present and active in the context of executing already established choreography? What is the place of the dancer's adaptive choices, and how do they manifest in the remounting process and subsequent performance of the work? Three phases are identified in order to contextualize these questions within the remounting process. The three phases are: Mimesis, Embodiment and Interpretation. The theoretical framework for this study comes from dance and performance studies, using references from Mark Franko, Bojana Cvejic, and William Forsythe.Item Open Access Introspection into the Evolution of Bharathanatyam in Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora During and Post Civil War(2021-07-06) Kanageswaran, Meera; Alcedo, Russ PatrickUnity, devastation, courage, helplessness, perseverance, sorrow, valour and loss were experiences of the Sri Lankan Tamils living in Sri Lanka and the broader global diaspora throughout the nations Civil War period. During this time, Sri Lankan Tamil artists around the world introduced new gestures and movements as well as altered existing Bharathanatyam vocabulary in order to produce dance works that addressed their lived experiences. If this was not contemporizing Bharathanatyam, then what is? The pain and oppression endured overflowed as expressive dance works. Through the creation of two dance films, Iappu and Isolation, this thesis investigates the potential of furthering Bharathanatyam by contemporizing and secularizing. Exploration into dance works created during the Civil War period is the fuelling factor for Iappu. In addition to acknowledging the contributions of Sri Lankan Tamils to contemporary Bharathanatyam, this thesis will intensify the versatility of Bharathanatyam movement vocabulary to tell present-day, relevant and urgent stories, such as the ones coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolation, the second dance film as part of this thesis, is an exploration into the various different lockdown experiences. The shared experiences of the War and the pandemic is the common theme within the films.Item Open Access Methods of Surrealism and Intermedial Contemporary Dance(2022-08-08) Stuart, Jessica Lynn Hayley; Jimenez, JenniferThis thesis draws on the creative method of Surrealism referred to as automatism within the setting of contemporary dance. The research acknowledges the origins of the Surrealist movement, the use of automatism across various disciplines, and its application within the thesis research. The practice of automatism is used to generate unique movement that is organic to the individual. Interested in the unconscious mind as a trove of creative impulses, the performers are urged to communicate with their creative core, without the judgement of their logical, conscious mind. The visual aesthetic of the work aims to model Surrealisms goal to transcend from reality. To further support this, Jessica Stuart relies on the use of digital media to construct what she refers to as a "dreamscape" environment. Film and projections are significant mediums in this exploration of technology and dance. Choreography and technology are combined in order to augment the live performance space, and challenge concepts of reality. The results of this research are used to create Stuart's Master of Fine Arts thesis project, In Media Res: an intermedial contemporary dance, existing in both the physical and virtual planes.Item Open Access Moving Through States: Applying the Seven Levels of Tension(2021-11-15) Seibold, Kaitlyn Helene; Callison, DarceyThis thesis draws from Theatre Methodist Jacques Lecoqs and his Seven Levels of Tension to experiment with contemporary dance choreography and performance, and discusses the process and insights that unfolded during the creation of Meeting at R9: a short, contemporary dance film and my Masters thesis project. Focusing on ways a performer can access, experience, and recognize tension in the body, I explore ways in which choreographers can use tension levels (as well as mime and improvisation) to evoke a sense of urgency and different impulses in order to generate different physicalities (or physical capacities). Accessing and utilizing expressive, embodied movements inspired in this process, I argue, can serve to generate dynamic choreography and stimulate audience engagement. This thesis is intended for the performer, researcher, choreographer, or anyone who is interested in using the Seven Levels of Tension to craft movement for the stage and alternative locations.Item Open Access Nostrovia: Methods in Creating Immersive Theatre for Audiences(2020-12-07) Kearns, Raine Madison; Olafson, FreyaIn Nostrovia: Methods in Creating Immersive Theatre for Audiences, I explore the process and politics of creating an immersive dance theatre experience. Nostrovia was performed January 16th -18th 2020 at The Peacock Public House and reimagines the historical narrative of the Romanov family. This thesis begins with an overview of participatory movements and presentations that inspired immersive and site specific performances, and then proceeds to summarize the theoretical framework that was used to create this production. Through the use of adaptive narrative, consensual practices and movement shaped for non-dance spaces, I outline the practices and developments that occurred throughout and subsequently following the performances. This thesis is aimed at understanding and analyzing methodologies for guiding and engaging viewers/participants through contemporary dance presentations.