Taking a Breath: Understanding the Interrelationship of Breath in Dance/Movement Therapy and Everyday Life

The integration of breath throughout contexts within dance/movement therapy and daily life can empower an able body-minded individual to explore awareness, which can ultimately achieve a greater sense of overall well-being. This thesis attempts to consider ways in which the breath can be used in both dance/movement therapy and in everyday life. Beginning with an introduction that questions ways in which the breath can be integrated more thoroughly in the field of dance/movement therapy and the takeaways that can serve able body-minded individuals in their everyday lives, it then transitions into the review of literature in physiological contexts, breath and the body-mind-emotion interrelationship, breath awareness in everyday life, and breath in the role of dance/movement therapy. The author also writes about her personal experiences with breath and the information it has provided her as an able body-minded human being and dance/movement therapist

Choreographic Exploration of Misappropriation in Hip Hop Dance

To examine the properties that comprise hip-hop dance, a choreographic work will be shown that aims to intentionally misappropriate traditional hip hop vocabulary and philosophies. Drawing from post-modern ideologies such as repetition, accumulation, improvisation for choreography, and chance procedure, the work will scrutinize movements classified as hip-hop alongside contemporary dance material. Spurred by the popularity of Ian Eastwood’s dance videos, this work will embody similar movements and visual expressions portrayed in Eastwood’s films. Although Eastwood’s choreography seemingly exemplifies the hip-hop aesthetic, a large majority of the way Eastwood presents his work misaligns contextually with hip-hop ideologies. However, because of his embodiment of the ‘cool’ aesthetic, the use of hip-hop music, and some traditional hip-hop vocabulary, the content of his work is not questioned in terms of authenticity. If this post-modern depiction employs the same tactics as Eastwood, will the work be considered hip-hop? Consequently, viewers are asked to question what exactly qualifies hip-hop… is it the content? Or context? If a dance is set to hip-hop music and implements traditional hip-hop movements but is contextually out of the hip-hop culture, is it really hip-hop? Through this analysis, perhaps we can begin to recognize cases of misappropriation not only in hip-hop, but also in various cultural expressions