Expanded Choreographies - Choreographic Histories

From objects to sounds, choreography is expanding beyond dance and human bodies in motion. This book offers one of the rare systematic investigations of expanded choreography as it develops in contemporaneity, and is the first to consider expanded choreography from a trans-historical perspective. Through case studies on different periods of European dance history - ranging from Renaissance dance to William Forsythe's choreographic objects and from Baroque court ballets to digital choreographies - it traces a journey of choreography as a practice transcending its sole association with dancing, moving, human bodies

Choreographic Space

This thesis, Choreographic Space, and accompanying exhibit is an arrangement of contemporary work being done in the cross-over between movement, drawing, sound and architecture. The thesis develops a lineage of choreographic thinking through a fissure in the classification of a dance as necessarily the body in motion. Through the link of the “choreographic object,” Choreographic Space asks how an interdisciplinary exploration of the principles of movement can reveal novel ways to think about the body in space

Expanded Choreographies - Choreographic Histories

From objects to sounds, choreography is expanding beyond dance and human bodies in motion. This book offers one of the rare systematic investigations of expanded choreography as it develops in contemporaneity, and is the first to consider expanded choreography from a trans-historical perspective. Through case studies on different periods of European dance history - ranging from Renaissance dance to William Forsythe's choreographic objects and from Baroque court ballets to digital choreographies - it traces a journey of choreography as a practice transcending its sole association with dancing, moving, human bodies

The nature and enactment of African dance that produces neurogenic tremors

Distinctly African health-promoting human occupations are under-researched in occupational therapy. Many occupational therapy interventions used in South Africa have been developed elsewhere and may be inaccessible to many. African dance that produces neurogenic tremors (ADNT) is an occupation that may already be accessible to many, and a potential resource for health and could be used in occupational therapy. Research Question: What is the nature and enactment of ADNT? Aim: The study aimed to explore, describe and explain the nature and enactment of ADNT among professional dancers in Cape Town, South Africa. Research objectives: To explore the perceived temporal, spatial and sociocultural conditions conducive for ADNT. To describe and explain the enactment of ADNT in terms of format, pace, and the sequence of steps involved in performing African dance repertoires that are known to produce neurogenic tremors. To describe the experience of those who participate in ADNT by exploring the subjective effect it has had on stress levels or during stressful periods. Methodology: Case study methodology was used. Semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observation were the data collection methods used. Thematic analysis was employed to analyse the data. Findings: Four themes emerged from the study (1) Triggers: Improvisation, Energy and pushing beyond limits. (2) Essence of self: Embodying Africa through dance. (3) Leaving and returning to the body and (4) Creatures of the soil: Connected to the ground and beyond…for health. Discussion: ADNT is healing, relational, transcendent, and contextually situated. It facilitates self-acceptance (ubuwena) through embodying Africa (KwaNtu) and holds potential to promote social cohesion (ubuntu). It is mainly enacted through improvisation (on and off-stage), through which socio-historical-cultural intergenerational resources (isintu) embedded within, are tapped into. ADNT offers opportunities for connectedness with the self, other people, as well as with transcendent beings. Conclusion: This study has illuminated the nature of ADNT as an extraordinary human occupation that offers participants instances of personal and collective meaning-making, healing, and transcendence. Transcendence is proposed as a source of personal and shared meaning

Expanded Choreographies – Choreographic Histories

From objects to sounds, choreography is expanding beyond dance and human bodies in motion. This book offers one of the rare systematic investigations of expanded choreography as it develops in contemporaneity, and is the first to consider expanded choreography from a trans-historical perspective. Through case studies on different periods of European dance history – ranging from Renaissance dance to William Forsythe's choreographic objects and from Baroque court ballets to digital choreographies – it traces a journey of choreography as a practice transcending its sole association with dancing, moving, human bodies

Perpetual Motion: Dance, Digital Cultures, and the Common

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of The Ohio State University Libraries. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: https://openmonographs.org.Interactivity and Agency: Making-Common and the Limits of Difference -- Dance in Public: Of Common Spaces -- A World from a Crowd: Composing the Common -- Screen Sharing: Dance as Gift of the Commo

Embodying Black Religions in Africa and Its Diasporas

The contributors to Embodying Black Religions in Africa and Its Diasporas investigate the complex intersections between the body, religious expression, and the construction and transformation of social relationships and political and economic power. Among other topics, the essays examine the dynamics of religious and racial identity among Brazilian Neo-Pentecostals; the significance of cloth coverings in Islamic practice in northern Nigeria; the ethics of socially engaged hip-hop lyrics by Black Muslim artists in Britain; ritual dance performances among Mama Tchamba devotees in Togo; and how Ifá practitioners from Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad, and the United States join together in a shared spiritual ethnicity. From possession and spirit-induced trembling to dance, the contributors outline how embodied religious practices are central to expressing and shaping interiority and spiritual lives, national and ethnic belonging, ways of knowing and techniques of healing, and sexual and gender politics. In this way, the body is a crucial site of religiously motivated social action for people of African descent. Contributors. Rachel Cantave, Youssef Carter, N. Fadeke Castor, Yolanda Covington-Ward, Casey Golomski, Elyan Jeanine Hill, Nathanael J. Homewood, Jeanette S. Jouili, Bertin M. Louis Jr., Camee Maddox-Wingfield, Aaron Montoya, Jacob K. Olupona, Elisha P. Renn

Break the Game: A Practice-Based Study of Breaking and Movement Design for Video Games

As players go through a circular pattern of experiencing games they pass through: observation, interpretation, hypothesis making, decision-making then finally acting upon decisions. Their successes and failures help the player construct an understanding of the game world, and as a result increases their confidence in their ability to make informed decisions when faced with game play challenges. In order for a player to be emotionally absorbed by the game’s story they must be fully immersed in the action. In order to achieve this, all aspects of the game must reinforce the narrative design and sculpt a world in a way that makes the player feel as if they were living in the shoes of the character/avatar. When successfully applied this allows the player to have an emotional experience at which point they are more likely to fully invest in the story of the game through autonomous, authorial, and asynchronous play. This thesis proposes that the control scheme design for games with gesture interfaces which require a more global embodiment from the players should actively reinforce the narrative and in so doing reflect the feel of the game more completely

Racialising assemblages and affective events: A feminist new materialism and posthuman study of Muslim schoolgirls in London

Recent years have seen rising trends in terrorism, hate crime and Islamophobia in the UK. Enforced Prevent and counter-terrorism strategies have re-located all Muslims as threatening and having potentiality to radicalisation. This PhD thesis is concerned with how a Muslim schoolgirl feels, lives and experiences everyday life in this era. I follow fifteen Muslim schoolgirls across time and space by mapping relational materialities between things that matter for them in their ordinary everyday practices and experiences. This thesis takes up the feminist new materialist and post- humanist call for anticipating potentialities of the virtual, material and affective to find a different capacity for the analysis of events, practices, assemblages, feelings, and the backgrounds of everyday experiences against which relations unfold in their myriad potentials. I argue that the affective atmospheres around Muslims provide the conditions for the emergence of racialising encounters. Multi-sensory methods of walking intra-view, creating photo-diary and face-to- face interview were developed to explore relations between bodies, spaces, times, virtual and actual. Stories, places, objects, thoughts and feelings that emerge as data and in-between relational materialities were mapped and read diffractively through one another. Thinking through relationality, materiality and affect enabled this thesis to actualise the plurality of Muslim schoolgirls' relations-in-the-world and their subjectivity as part of the becoming-assemblages with human and more-than- human bodies. This thesis mapped and challenged some of the racialised, gendered and hegemonic views of Muslim schoolgirls as risky, threatening and with a potential to radicalisation. Mattering with what those Muslim schoolgirls mattered with, their fear of racial harassment in the course of their everyday lives, of what to say, do and wear, their desire to live in safe houses and blossom in safe schools, all showed that safeguarding educational policies need to shift their focus towards threats of racial harassment, of living in overcrowded housing and being silenced rather than seeking to prevent the threat of radicalisation

Embodying Black Religions in Africa and Its Diasporas

The contributors to Embodying Black Religions in Africa and Its Diasporas investigate the complex intersections between the body, religious expression, and the construction and transformation of social relationships and political and economic power. Among other topics, the essays examine the dynamics of religious and racial identity among Brazilian Neo-Pentecostals; the significance of cloth coverings in Islamic practice in northern Nigeria; the ethics of socially engaged hip-hop lyrics by Black Muslim artists in Britain; ritual dance performances among Mama Tchamba devotees in Togo; and how Ifá practitioners from Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad, and the United States join together in a shared spiritual ethnicity. From possession and spirit-induced trembling to dance, the contributors outline how embodied religious practices are central to expressing and shaping interiority and spiritual lives, national and ethnic belonging, ways of knowing and techniques of healing, and sexual and gender politics. In this way, the body is a crucial site of religiously motivated social action for people of African descent. Contributors. Rachel Cantave, Youssef Carter, N. Fadeke Castor, Yolanda Covington-Ward, Casey Golomski, Elyan Jeanine Hill, Nathanael J. Homewood, Jeanette S. Jouili, Bertin M. Louis Jr., Camee Maddox-Wingfield, Aaron Montoya, Jacob K. Olupona, Elisha P. Renn