Four Case Studies in Dance, Discourse, and Shifting Boundaries
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Movement Writes: Four Case Studies in Dance, Discourse, and Shifting Boundaries Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Fenella Kennedy Graduate Program in Dance Studies The Ohio State University 2019 Dissertation Committee Dr. Karen Eliot, Advisor Dr. Harmony Bench Dr. Gabriella Modan Professor Norah Zuniga Shaw 1 Copyrighted by Fenella Kennedy 2019 2 Abstract This dissertation uses four case studies to examine the shifting discourse of dance and dance studies since the turn of the 20th century, and how this discourse is in relationship with the political, social, and academic cultural context of the United States. My interdisciplinary research uses methods adapted from microhistory and Critical Discourse Analysis, as well as archival research and close reading in order to show how various forms of dance writing have been instrumental in shaping that discourse and creating change within and across our discipline. My first case study centers on the term “modern dance” in order to draw parallels between Fordist industrial practices and the racialization of social partner dancing in the first decades of the 20th century, resulting in the erasure of black influences on modern dance. My second case study focuses on the writing of John Cage and Jill Johnston – two artists whose experimental poetics reflected and facilitated the turn to postmodernism during the mid-20th century. Unpacking various techniques within their writing I show how these artists used black literary aesthetics and other experimental devices to articulate a vision of political and social togetherness during the climate of the Lavender Scare. My third case study traces the rise of dance studies within American higher education, comparing two anthologies: What is Dance from 1983 and the second edition of the Routledge Dance Studies Reader from 2010. From this comparison I move to a ii close reading of Susan Foster’s 2010 re-publication of “Choreographing History” to show how Foster negotiates attitudes to gender and the body within an academic setting. My final case study examines dance as a medium for social change, guided by two metaphors: the studio is the world, and choreography is protest. Using contemporary theories of horizontality, affect and technique I analyze a range of works through this metaphorical lens, showing how both the rehearsal process and the choreography of dance in performance can affect the reception and durational impact of a social message. Across this dissertation I demonstrate that by examining dance discursively it is possible to contextualize dance practices and dance writing in relation to a given historical moment, and by doing so to draw new conclusions about practices of dance and dance writing. Considering each of these case studies reveals not only how critics, historians, dancers and scholars have used dance writing to establish disciplinary boundaries in one context, but also how those boundaries have been shifted over time, and to what effect. iii Dedication To bare feet on studio floors, the smells of wood and leather and paper, to sunshine through the window, to motion, and to stillness. iv Acknowledgments This dissertation is the work of a community, and it would be impossible to thank everyone who contributed. Nevertheless, I would like to bear witness to certain ways that I have been sustained and moved through this process: To my committee: Dr Galey Modan, Norah Zuniga Shaw, Dr Harmony Bench, and above all and especially to my committee chair Dr Karen Eliot for seeing the value in my work, helping me realize my ideas, and for editing with grace, vision, and kindness. To the remaining faculty, staff, and my graduate community in the OSU Department of Dance, who have engaged my body, brain and soul for the last five years, and made this city state and school into my home. To Bita, Nexus, and Fey, for living with my writing process. To Ann, Bea, Benny, and Fred for reading drafts, outlines, abstracts, and chapters, and for making sure that I never quit grad school, even when I really, really wanted to. To the American Blues Dance community for welcoming me, for trusting me, and for doing the work with me. To Damon Stone, to Daniel Miles, to Grey Armstrong. To Michael and Christi Jay for showing me how love, scholarship, and humanity should always live together. To Caitlin, Dana, Elinor, Emma, Fox, Gigi, John, Julia, Kitty, Laura, Naa Vah, and Red – to friendships spanning across continents and time. v To the community of the Fusion Immersion Retreat for the last breath before the plunge. To Ivy, who got me to OSU in the first place. Thank you all, and thank you to you, for listening. vi Vita Personal Information Iye. Choreographed for The Ohio State University School Tour…………………..2018 The Blue No w here. Commissioned for Ten Tiny Dances Festival………………..2017 The Aviary. Site-specific work for MINT Collective’s Queer Performance Series...2016 #TagLab. Intermedia performance environment for the ACCAD open house……..2016 The Ohio State University. Instructor of Record ………………………..…….……2015 The Ohio State University, began PhD in Dance Studies…………….……………..2014 Advanced Labanotation, Dance Notation Bureau, NYC……………………………2014 Burklyn Ballet Theatre, Junior Program Assistant Director………….……………..2013 Nutshell Dance Company. Rehearsal Director…………………….………...………2013 Lecturer at Trinity Laban Conservatoire……………………………….……………2012 William Morris College. Instructor of Record for Graham Technique……….……..2012 Trinity Laban Conservatoire, BA (Hons) in Dance Theater…………………………2010 Publications “Watching Ghosts, Reading The Shadows.” Book review of Penny Farfan’s Performing Queer Modernism published in Dance Chronicle……………………………2018 “Rethinking the Travesty Dancer: Questions of Reading and Representation in the Paris Opera” Published in Dance Chronicle………………………………………..2017 http://headtailconnection.wordpress.com/ vii https://thebackofjazz.wordpress.com/ Fields of Study Major Field: Dance Studies viii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v Vita .................................................................................................................................... vii Chapter 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2. Before We Became Modern: The Slow Drag from Black Partner Dancing to Concert Stages .................................................................................................................. 27 Chapter 3. Aesthetic Otherness, Poetic Kinship: Covering and Community in the Writing of John Cage and Jill Johnston......................................................................................... 78 Chapter 4. Slamming, Smashing, Switching and Sliding: Dance Writing Tropes In American Higher Education ........................................................................................... 133 Chapter 5. Metaphors We Dance By .............................................................................. 190 Chapter 6. Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 243 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 257 Appendix A. Extract fron “Does Jazz Put the ‘Sin’ in Syncopation?” .......................... 291 Appendix B. Extract from “Well Hung” ......................................................................... 293 ix Chapter 1. Introduction It is 2012 and I am standing in the foyer of the Martha Graham Dance Center, freshly in residence at the Westbeth Studios of New York City. To my right I can see the sun-drenched black floor of the main studio catching the summer light off the Hudson river, but I cannot enter. I have come to document the teaching practice of the different teachers working at the school as a part of my Advanced Labanotation qualification, positive that in the physical shifts of technique over time are clues to the various priorities and influences affecting the choreography of Martha Graham, whose work I love. While the school itself is in support of my work, the teacher of the advanced class is resistant – she doesn’t understand how Labanotation (a symbolic language that scores dance in a manner similar to music) can capture the subtleties of Graham’s technique. I am surrounded by a cluster of dancers in a rainbow of unitards, I take a deep breath, smelling sweat and hairspray and old wood, hunched and desperate, I rummage in my bag for a pencil and then I straighten up, and hold out my notes: “Let me show you.” My dissertation makes an intervention in the network of scholarship addressing the relationship between dance and text. At its heart is the idea that if scholars examine dance writing we can observe an authorial negotiation of attitudes towards social, 1 cultural, political and aesthetic phenomena. We can use these observations to understand why certain kinds of dance and choreographers rose to prominence in a given historical moment,