Date of Submission

Spring 2014

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Dance

Project Advisor 1

Leah Cox

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Artist Statement

As an anthropologist and dance artist my work seeks to incorporate cultural elements that shape my own and other people’s identity from different social as well as geographic backgrounds. Both of my latest choreographic works, Rifts, Away and Back and Split Points, are a result of an ongoing exploration of the links between ethnographic research and the creative process in dance. My written senior thesis in dance, Blending Backgrounds: Ethnography and the Creative Process in Choreography describes a yearlong exploration of how my cultural and personal background, and ethnographic research, Performing Syncretism: A case study of Corpus Christi in Alangasi, Ecuador, have informed my dance and choreographic practice.

I am interested in the cultural value of dance practice in ritualistic popular culture within different societies around the world. I hope to understand the meaning of the intricate symbolism found in these rituals, and conceptually apply the structure, dynamics, and relationships of these into my own artistic process based on my personal cultural, social, and political context. In the case of both of my choreographic works, I have used topics found in my ethnographic research such as ritual, developmental patterns in movement, trance and transformation, the mundane vs. the unknown, memory, mundanity, and identity to generate and structure choreography as well as augment my own understanding of reality.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Download

This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.

Bard Off-campus Download

Bard College faculty, staff, and students can login from off-campus by clicking on the Off-campus Download button and entering their Bard username and password.

Share

COinS