Hudson Bell Dissertation Front Matter

UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Audience Engagement in San Francisco's Contemporary Dance Scene: Forging Connections Through Food Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/01z1796x Author Bell, Melissa Hudson Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California ! UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE! ! ! ! Audience Engagement in San Francisco’s Contemporary Dance Scene: Forging Connections Through! Food ! ! ! A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements! for the degree of ! Doctor of Philosophy! in! Critical Dance! Studies by! Melissa Hudson! Bell ! June !2014 ! ! ! ! ! Dissertation Committee: Dr. Jacqueline Shea Murphy, Chairperson Dr. Anthea Kraut Dr. Lynette Hunter ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Copyright by Melissa Hudson Bell 2014! ! ! !The Dissertation of Melissa Hudson Bell is approved by:! ! ! ! !!!!!!!!!!! ! ! !!!!!!!!!!! ! !!!!!!!!! ! !!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!! Committee Chairperson! ! ! ! ! ! University of California, Riverside! ! ! ! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS! Writing a dissertation has proven to be a journey not only into the various performance scenarios I have chosen as the subjects of my research, but into my own biases, predilections, and ways of sensing, remembering, moving, dreaming, and being in the world. As such, I have relied heavily upon the support and feedback of many people, each of whom were able to hold a mirror up to me and to the work, thoughtfully reflecting back the hidden caves, craggy fronts, and quiet coffee-tinged reminiscences that could be more thoroughly explored. First and foremost I need to thank my dissertation committee members whose continued encouragement and commitment to my work has been integral to its development. Lynette Hunter introduced me to critical feminist texts and ideas as well as to the performance art of the brilliant Bobby Baker, whose performance not only inspired and entertained me, but helped me better define the intended scope of my project. Lynette served as my faculty representative for the Multi-campus Food and Body Working Group, an amazing collection of scholars and graduate students who assisted me in delving into the realm of food studies. Thank you to Anthea Kraut for your gentle and consistent assurances throughout my tenure as a UCR grad student, for your role in helping me destabilize the alleged authority of historical archives and your thought- provoking suggestions on how to better interweave difficult discussions around racial inequity throughout the writing. Great big thanks go to my dissertation chair, Jacqueline !iv Shea Murphy, whose dedication to her students, family, and and research subjects have been so inspirational. You read my shaky first stabs at writing each of these chapters - opening my eyes to unforeseen possibilities. You talked me through my fears around presenting my first conference paper and, most heartwarmingly, you opened up your beautiful home for countless meetings staged over snacks and tea at the kitchen table or, on sunny days, in your greenly peaceful backyard. In this last move, we two were able to enact some of the work my writing was claiming commensal exchange performed in dance contexts... the good feeling, thoughtful reflection, norm-challenging, and slow-time thinking through of questions that could otherwise easily be overlooked in the dizzying pace of daily life. I hold these meetings very dear, and know that they will linger as sweet reminders of my years as a grad student when so much else has faded away. I am also most grateful to Linda Tomko and Wendy Rogers who served on the committee for my qualifying exams and to Sally Ness who sat in on my exams and provided wonderful feedback on my prospectus. Linda’s voice continues to ring in my ears, urging me away from sweeping generalizations with reminders to consider the “for what and for whom,” and to “make the implicit explicit,” tactics that have proven extremely helpful not only in my writing and teaching, but in my interpersonal relationships of all sorts. Wendy Rogers turned me on to Anna Halprin’s Apartment 6, a key element of chapter two. I am grateful for her endless enthusiasm and wealth of embodied knowledge about bay area dance. Wendy, you quite literally saved the day when you found that old-fashioned egg beater at an antique store in downtown Riverside, !v just the thing that was missing from my MFA concert featuring fantastical imaginings of Betty Crocker. Neil Greenberg, Marta Savigliano, Priya Srinivasan, and San-San Kwan also each contributed significantly to my capacity for critical thinking and moving - posing difficult questions, writing letters of recommendation, and providing feedback on various endeavors throughout the past seven growth-spurt filled years of graduate school. Gratitude also goes to Susan Rose, my mentor and committee chair while I was pursuing my MFA in Experimental Choreography. Susan’s approach to life’s puzzles is unlike any I have otherwise encountered. As such, she has modeled a way of intervening in the work of others that is so clear and so open-ended as to be applicable to an endless array of life’s conundrums. Her lessons in “turning the volume up or down” on certain things in order to produce certain effects, as well as her insistence that I take a critical eye to my own work, decide more specifically what I am trying to do, and then “do that thing more” has changed everything. I am exceedingly glad to have shared in these little lessons, and so many more, with my partner-in-all-things Hannah Schwadron. Hannah has co-piloted me through just about every crisis, catharsis, and creative burst that I have encountered since we first locked eyes at circle time so many years ago. Your dedication, grace, creative problem-solving, and “oops removal” philosophy have been my cornerstone, it has been an honor to have you as co-conspirator in all my life’s recent experiments. Of course, Hannah and I were not alone in navigating the choppy waters of graduate school and I’d like to also thank the other members of my cohort, especially !vi Melissa Templeton, Adanna Jones, Szu-Ching Chang, Ann Mazzocca and Asheley Smith for their countless acts of generosity and encouragement, and for family dinners where food and dance so clearly co-mingled in meaningful ways. This group of brilliant female dancer scholars joined Hannah in providing feedback on drafts of chapters and conference talks, lent me their ears, arms, minds and dancing bodies for projects ranging from cakewalk recreations, hippo ballets, and dances with rubber chickens to Joshua tree journeys and cross-state commutes with a coolerful of goldfish. They have served as co- presenters, babysitters, sounding boards, launching and landing pads - thank you so much, each of you. Laura Jo Schuster, Hannah Schwadron, P. Lizbef Schuricht, and Martha Rynberg, our honorary family members, I offer up gratitude daily for the ways that you care so ably for me and my family - we simply would not have survived the tumult of these last several years of long distance relationships, cross-country moves, job changes, births, deaths, and fitful growing without you. UC Riverside is a wonderful place to pursue higher education. The tireless work of the administrative staff, facilities managers, and representatives in graduate division have made a timely graduation possible. I am especially grateful to Karen Wilson and Christine Leapman, the former and current program coordinators of the Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts that provided me with wonderful teaching opportunities as well as funds to support my graduate studies. Thank you also to Rory Moore and Maggie Gover who coordinated the Graduate Dissertation Writing Retreat. It was there I had the pleasure of working with a wonderful small group of fellow dissertation writers who !vii benefitted tremendously from the mentorship of Janet O’Shea. Many, many thanks to Professor O’Shea for the ways in which you assuaged our fears, stoked our confidence that we were each making a contribution to knowledge, and helped us navigate individual and collective concerns about sailing the dissertation ship into the harbor. Huge thanks go to each of the interviewees who generously contributed their thoughts, memories, video archives and other documentation to this project. To Mary Armentrout, Laurel Butler, Katie Faulkner, Anna Halprin, Julie Potter, Wendy Rein, Jessica Robinson-Love, Wendy Rogers, Janice Ross, Charles Slender, Ryan T. Smith, Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, Amara Tabor-Smith, and Jeremy Townsend I am deeply, deeply indebted. This project hinges upon your creative contributions, hard work, and outside- the-box thinking, doing and dancing. It is people like you that make the bay area such an incredible place to be. Finally, many thanks must be extended to my family. Thanks to Tom and Sally Fama, Art and Chris Hudson, Beth Rede, Gina Hudson, and Matt Hudson - for cultivating in me an early love of learning, for participating in many of my first creative pursuits, and for putting up with, if not encouraging, my critical questioning of the world around me. I am endlessly grateful for the ways in which Kamau, my husband, has extended my worldview, challenging me to articulate my convictions and to be flexible and compassionate towards others who operate in ways that I at times find quite foreign. Your love, support and willingness to act as my co-collaborator for life have meant the world to me. Thanks for choosing me, and for choosing to join me in making our amazing !viii children, both Sami and our new Baby Bell whose little dancing feet I can just this week feel fluttering around inside. Last but not least, I dedicate this work to my daughter Samaiyah Smithanne Bell. I became pregnant with her shortly after finishing my coursework, and she grew inside me as my knowledge grew through my preparation for my written exams.

Load more