The Practice of Choreography Within Practice-as-Research: Choreographing in the Simultaneity of the Non-Simultaneous

by Lu Shirley Dai

This thesis establishes the practice of choreography within the methodology of Practice- as-Research (PaR) and draws on performance theorist and dramaturge Bojana Cvejić’s idea of choreography as “problem-posing” to emphasize choreography’s capacity to provoke ideas, questions and problems in the creative and performative process. It centers the choreographic practice around the question of time and engages in conversations about the conceptualization and actualization of time philosophically, theoretically and choreographically. Investigating Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch’s concept of the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous, the author connects this theory to her personal experience of living in America as a Chinese national. Advocating for the idea of choreographing in the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous, this project emphasizes that choreography can not only function as a liberating vehicle charged in the non-simultaneous situation, but also potently raises the following questions: Can choreography both embody and establish a social, cultural, political and artistic identity? Is there a national border line and a historical artistic lineage guarding and trapping the identity of the work itself? Can choreography not only evoke all of these questions, but also be liberated from these limitations and contradictions?

"Dancing and Drawing in Trisha Brown’s Work: A Conversation Between Choreography and Visual Art"

by Lu Shirley Dai

This Art History and Dance combined, interdisciplinary thesis explores the connections between choreographic approaches and creative processes in dance and visual art. It develops from a postmodern, historical foundation and looks at choreographer Trisha Brown’s drawing and dancing in 1970s, a crucial period when Brown constantly investigated fundamental questions about choreography. It was through her drawing and choreography that Brown was able to examine structure from both choreographic and visual perspectives. Chapter Two uses Wassily Kandinsky’s theory of line to analyze Brown’s 1973 linear drawings as well as her notion of the body-making line in space. Chapter Three compares Brown’s Locus (1975) to conceptual artist Sol LeWitt’s sculpture Incomplete Open Cubes (1974). Both Brown and LeWitt emphasized the conceptual idea behind a work of art, and both adopted the cubic form as a visual strategy to actualize their conceptual ideas.

Download https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8BG2P4S