UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Gaga as Politics: A Case Study of Contemporary Dance Training A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Critical Dance Studies by Meghan Ruth Quinlan June 2016 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Anthea Kraut, Chairperson Dr. Jens Richard Giersdorf Dr. Linda Tomko Dr. Jeff Sacks Copyright by Meghan Ruth Quinlan 2016 The Dissertation of Meghan Ruth Quinlan is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements The process of writing a dissertation is at times solitary, but always dependent on the support of a community. I am extremely lucky to be surrounded by an amazing group of faculty, friends, and family who have made the completion of this project possible. First and foremost, I want to thank my committee chair, Anthea Kraut, for all of her help and critical insight. In addition to pushing me to consider new critical lenses and embrace the contradictions in my work, I cannot thank her enough for her cheerleading and organizational wizardry as she helped me negotiate everything from grant applications, chapter outlines, university forms, and seemingly endless revisions. I am also deeply indebted to Jens Giersdorf, who not only significantly influenced the thinking and structure of the project but is also the reason that I applied to and ultimately attended graduate school. He has been a trusted mentor since I was an undergraduate student, and I am so thankful for his forthright and forward-looking feedback from pre- to post-UCR. Linda Tomko has been a key actor in not only my dissertation project, but also my growth as a scholar. Her generosity and support as she consistently pushes me to be more specific, articulate, and cognizant of the importance of contextualization inspires me to be a better scholar and person. Jeff Sacks has also been a driving force in this project, leading me deep into discourses on Israel/Palestine and encouraging me to engage with and learn Hebrew to deepen my understanding of regional politics while embracing my dance studies approach. iv I am also grateful to the professors I have had the privilege of working with throughout my time at the Dance Department at UC Riverside: Priya Srinivasan, Jacqueline Shea Murphy, Imani Kai Johnson, Wendy Rogers, Susan Rose, and Kelli King. In studios and seminar rooms, these strong, brilliant women have encouraged me to move beyond my familiar limits in every sense of the term. Without their guidance I would never have had the courage to explore an improvisatory dance form as my research project, or engage with ethnographic methods. My work has also benefitted from the feedback of countless scholars through conferences, seminars, and publication opportunities. Sherril Dodds has been influential in the development of my third chapter as I adapt an argument from this chapter for an upcoming publication, and Judith Brin Ingber has been a supportive figure who has graciously shared her own experiences writing about dance in Israel and personal experiences and interviews with Ohad Naharin. Feedback from senior scholars and peers at the Mellon Dance Studies Summer Seminar 2015 held at Northwestern University has also greatly influenced my writing for this project. I am also full of gratitude for the many conversations I’ve been a part of with participants at the various conferences I’ve had the opportunity to attend and present at, such as at the annual CORD/SDHS joint conferences, which have challenged me and contributed to this work in innumerable ways. The research required for this project was supported by several generous grants from UCR: a Department of Dance Dissertation Research Grant, a Graduate Deans’ Dissertation Research Grant, and a Humanities Graduate Student Research Grant. The v writing and editing of this work was made possible by the financial support from the Dissertation Year Program Award from UCR. I am also indebted to the Middlebury Language Schools for funding my summer of studying Modern Hebrew in their immersive language program. These research trips introduced me to a wide network of Gaga dancers, teachers, and scholars, whose participation in interviews and casual conversations were crucial to the success of this project. The openness of the Gaga community, from participants to professionals alike, has made this research not only possible, but a joy to perform. I am grateful for the dancers who were more than willing to share their experiences and space in the studio with me. I owe particular thanks to Deborah Friedes Galili, who has been enormously helpful in her capacity as a Gaga scholar and teacher as well as Gaga Movement Ltd. administrator in facilitating interviews, the circulation of surveys, and other research requests. To say that my colleagues over the years in the Dance Department need thanks is an understatement. I could not have made it through grad school without the emotional, intellectual, editorial, and enthusiastic support of the many friends I’ve made here. Special shout-outs to the entire Unicorn Cohort for keeping the magic alive, the honey bunches Natalie Zervou and Jen Aubrecht for reading (and editing) virtually everything I’ve ever written and generally keeping me sane, and Katie Stahl-Kovell for her constant support, brainstorming, and infectious positivity. I also want to thank all my family and friends for their support of my academic pursuits. Your immense pride in my accomplishments and funny notes, phone calls, and vi texts make up for the frequent laughs about becoming a doctor of dance, of all things. Jokes aside, I am so appreciative of the support to pursue any career I wanted as long as I was passionate about it. Last but not least, special thanks to Andy for helping me to not take this all too seriously, and getting me to laugh and keep going even when it seemed impossible. vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Gaga as Politics: A Case Study of Contemporary Dance Training by Meghan Ruth Quinlan Doctor of Philosophy, Critical Dance Studies University of California, Riverside, June 2016 Dr. Anthea Kraut, Chairperson This dissertation unpacks the politics embedded in the practice of Gaga, the movement language developed by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin. In doing so, I disrupt the dominant mass-media discourse and few academic articles that describe Gaga in terms of personal freedom and other universalizing, depoliticizing rhetorics. I challenge this common understanding of Gaga by acknowledging several political layers of Gaga. First I explore the Gaga organization’s rejection of the term “technique” to describe the practice, unpacking the Euro-American racial politics that are embedded in this term and arguing that Gaga/dancers classes do not completely elide these politics because the practice is structured as a meta-technique that depends on awareness of Europeanist form-based techniques. I then turn to the Israeli origins of the practice to argue that Gaga upholds several specifically Israeli ideals that are significant to acknowledge as the practice continues to circulate outside of Israel’s borders. Finally, I turn to a global scope to explore the relationship between Gaga and neoliberalism, viii suggesting that Gaga predominantly upholds neoliberal values, but also subverts them by emphasizing the importance of pleasure and bodily affects. These arguments about the political nature of Gaga are rooted in my ethnographic experiences. My Critical Dance Studies ethnographic approach recognizes a diversity of perspectives, and values the embodied experiences that often rupture the rhetoric used to describe and advertise Gaga. Three years of active participation in Gaga classes and workshops throughout the United States and attendance at two summer intensives held in Tel Aviv, Israel (2013 and 2015) lay the groundwork for my personal analysis of the practice. Interviews and surveys with active participants, teachers, and administrators of Gaga expand the scope of the project to consider international perspectives. I then apply theoretical inquiries from race studies, Israel/Palestine studies, globalization and neoliberal theory, and other academic discourses to unpack the politics that both my ethnographic subjects and I have encountered in the practice of Gaga. This case study furthers the academic discourse of Gaga, and also contributes to the broader scholarly studies of technique, contemporary dance training, neoliberalism, and the cultural politics of Israel/Palestine. ix Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 37 Decolonizing Gaga: Embodying the Politics of Appropriation and (Meta-)Techniques Chapter 2 98 The Cultural Politics of Practicing Israeli-ness in Gaga Chapter 3 143 Work Instructions and Gaga Intensives: Gaga and Neoliberal Economies Conclusion 201 Works Cited 217 x List of Images Image 1 144 Screenshot of Gaga Work Instructions Image 2 183 Exterior of Suzanne Dellal Center Image 3 184 Studio Suzy Image 4 194 Improvisation in Studio Varda Image 5 202 Screenshot of “Mr. Gaga” Facebook page xi Introduction The first time I heard about Gaga was in my undergraduate Senior Seminar class in New York. We were discussing the future of dance – which, in this conservatory-style program, meant concert dance – and someone mentioned the Batsheva Dance Company. I hadn’t seen a contemporary performance in over a month, because I had been spending my spare time assisting with the activities surrounding the recreation of a piece choreographed by Alwin Nikolais in 1985. Luckily, a few of my peers were more in touch with the contemporary dance world. A few of the more hip students – almost all sporting the partly-shaved head trend that was popular with artists at the time – began raving about a performance by Batsheva they had recently seen at the Joyce Theater downtown. They used adjectives like “explosive” and “dynamic”, and declared themselves infatuated. “They’re Israeli,” I remember someone saying, as if it were exotic and added to the company’s hype.