School of Culture and Communication - Theses

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    Indelible: a movement based practice-led inquiry into memory, remembering and representation
    Ellis, Simon K. ( 2005)
    Indelible is a performance and dance research project. It has three outcomes or pathways, presented on DVD-ROM, via which the user-reader can experience multi-modal perspectives on remembering, memory, and representing performative ideas, events and actions. These pathways are video, writing and interactive and together they form a series of hypermedia framings by which the corporeal and philosophical underpinnings of the project are witnessed. The research is considered to be practice-led, in which my practice consists of choreographic strategies, physical actions, media-based processes, and writing. Within these core representations I have sought to confront the methodological and theoretical paradox affecting performance makers electing to recontextualise their work beyond live processes. How might the absence or disappearance of a so-called live work contribute to the overall design and representational practices underlying the outcomes? In this sense the three pathways that comprise Indelible generate a complex network of artistic, scholarly, poetic, and methodological layerings or enfoldings in which the user-reader is presented with possibilities for experiencing the vital subjectivity and inherent fallibility of memory and remembering. (For complete abstract open dopcument)
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    Sydney Dance Company: a study of a connecting thread with the Ballets Russes
    STELL, PETER ( 2009)
    This thesis addresses unexplored territory within a relatively new body of scholarship concerning the history of the Ballets Russes in Australia. Specifically, it explores the connection between the original Diaghilev Ballets Russes (1909- 1929) and the trajectories of influence of Russian ballets that visited Australia. This thesis addresses unexplored territory within a relatively new body of scholarship concerning the history of the Ballets Russes in Australia. Specifically, it explores the connection between the original Diaghilev Ballets Russes (1909- 1929) and the trajectories of influence of Russian ballets that visited Australia. This study sketches the origins of the Ballets Russes, the impact its launch made on dance in the West, and how it progressed through three distinguishable phases of influence. It summarises the important features of the visits to Australia of Russian ballet companies from Adeline Genee in 1913 to the culturally altering impact of the revived Ballets Russes companies over three extended tours between 1936 and 1940. It charts the formation of viable ballet companies in Australia, commencing with Kirsova in 1939 and Borovansky in 1940, to the Australian Ballet in 1962 and the Sydney Dance Company led by Murphy between 1976 and 2008. Drawing on distinctions between classical and contemporary dance, it attempts to demonstrate the groundwork of example established by the Russian ballet, and, particularly, the revived Ballets Russes visits up to 1940. Data for this thesis was drawn from a personal interview with Graeme Murphy, original documentary research in public collections in Australia, government and Sydney Dance Company archives, newspapers and secondary literature.
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    In pursuit of a dancing ‘body’: modernity, physicality and identity in Australia, 1919 to 1939
    VINCENT, JORDAN BETH ( 2009)
    The primary focus of this work is the Interwar years (1919-1939), a time when dance came to the forefront of Australian consciousness, not only as an expression of worldwide modernity, but in terms of a new kind of local professionalism. Using dance as window through which to analyse Australian culture, this thesis explores notions of the dancing ‘body’ in Australia. For this research, the term dancing ‘body’ is used to indicate a kind of artistic identity that incorporates various elements of the mind, the physical being, the conscious and unconscious idea of ‘self,’ and the external perceptions and stereotypes about dancers. Importantly, perceptions and understandings about the dancing ‘body’ were not static during the Interwar period. They changed physically, emotionally, environmentally, socially, politically, and dynamically, depending on the genre of dance being analysed. This thesis identifies four main types of dance that became popular in Australia during the Interwar period—ballroom, physical culture, modern dance and classical ballet —recognising that each type presented a slightly different dancing ‘body’ to the world and was perceived accordingly. These types were differentiated by their dynamic, environment, relationships between dancers, level of professionalism, accompanying music, and societal or political purpose, yet all share an emphasis on the corporeal form, an element of performance or spectacle, and an association with femininity. Additionally, and most importantly, each of these four dancing ‘bodies’ was primarily associated with one or more cultures other than Australian, including American, Russian, English, and German. As a result, the dancing ‘body’ in Australia remained a foreign concept, connected to a variety of overseas cultures and ‘performing’ those associations through movement. While it is true that individual Australians danced, choreographed, taught and lobbied for their art-form, the sense remained in Australia that dancing was not an inherent national activity and thus, simply could not resonate with traditional notions of national identity. It leads us to ask this very complicated question: considering the varied cultural associations of the dancing ‘body,’ was there such a thing as an Australian dancing ‘body’? Did dance ever fully articulate an Australian national experience, aesthetic or ethos? This research shows that local insecurities about the abilities of Australian dancers and dance-makers was closely related to dancing being an imported activity, introduced through films, magazines, recorded music, and in the bodies of foreign dancers. Moreover, it was often those foreign associations of dance, associations believed to be strong enough to ‘infect’ an Australian dancer, that caused concern over the power of the dancing ‘body.’ The tensions between the four dancing ‘bodies’ of the Interwar period, and the almost mythological stereotype of the national Australian ‘body’ are explored in this research, differentiating it from other contemporary works on the history of dance. Rather than focusing only on professional tours, this research seeks to understand the dancing ‘body’ in relation to Australian notions of physicality, identity and modernity. Using dance as a ‘window’ through which to explore aspects of Australian culture during the Interwar period, this thesis argues that societal perceptions about dance and dancers were fundamentally related to the differences between behavioural expectations of Australian men and women, and dance’s inherent association with foreign cultures. This research looks closely at these cultural associations, and analyses various attempts by Australian dancers to legitimise their artform during an era of rapid technological, political and social change.
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    Why dance: the impact of multi arts practice and technology on contemporary dance
    Mokotow, A. ( 2007)
    This thesis investigates the influence of hybrid theatre practices, media and technology on contemporary dance performance and questions if dance is endangered by developments in hybrid cultures. Through a consideration of dance genealogies, the thesis suggests that notions of identity play a significant role in power structures within interdisciplinary relationships. Contemporary dance has gone through many changes in the last century. In particular, contemporary aspects of performance have demonstrated that the body is not the only site for dance. Why dance, is a culmination of questions that surfaced during the course of my own practice. It refers to questions that many dancers have asked themselves in the years following the arrival of postmodernism, when notions of body identity confronted conceptual possibilities in the terrain of interdisciplinary and mediated spaces. Incorporating my own experience as a practitioner and observer with theoretical perspectives in the field, I have attempted to give voice to some of the ambiguities and paradoxes that inhabit dance and its hybrid postmodern affiliates. I make use of various genealogies that have led to hybrid and interdisciplinary interactions as a means to define relationships of power that exist within interdisciplinarity. The use of case studies and examples of performances from Europe and Australia provide material through which to examine performance methodologies that have arisen out of interdisciplinary practice. My reading and suggestions express the concern that disciplines outside of the body may have become more important as defining element in dance. Through an examination of new ways that dancers now speak through media other than their bodies, the thesis examines what affects this has on the discipline of dance and questions if notions of disciplinarity are still relevant. While it has become necessary to reconstruct, reinterpret and demystify the body, the outcome suggests that autonomy rests with recognition of the body as the site for further development within negotiated spaces.