Browsing by Author "Kliën, Michael"

This thesis research presents a choreographic enquiry into ways Black Americans, specifically Black femme inhabit their bodies and their entanglements to the surrounding environment. It asks the question of how Black girls in the south navigate their social circumstances, and what inheritances—metaphysical, emotional, cultural—affect their encounters with themselves and each other. To do this the author contemplates concepts of the “undistinguished mass,” Black flesh, and inheritances as offered by Hortense Spillers. The author introduces her embodied practice of Groove as a bourgeoning theoretical framework for exploring self in the context of its larger positioning within society and the land. Groove is propositioned as a way of expanding awareness of self through movement, by paying attention to the sensatory information observed and communicated within our bodies. For this purpose a working group of Black femme was formed to trace their own geographies, histories, and sense of care, through conversations and physical movement strategies, to explore aspects that mold their own Grooves. This research project presents an urgent attempt to reimagine creative and embodied strategies for Black femme as a practice of freedom, tenderness, and connection. Through multimedia experimentations with the practice of Groove, it is proposed, that Black femme move to initiate a collective imagining, and access otherwise ways of being.

In the United States children spend anywhere from nine to thirteen years in school. During this time, children experience some of their most developmentally formative years of their life, which is often characterized as adolescence. For many Black girls in school, this period of adolescence is often where they learn about how their racial and gender identity can affect their everyday life. From teachers who refuse to pronounce their Black girl students’ names correctly to statewide legislation that specifically prohibit the teaching on race and slavery, schools become a space where Black girls begin to receive negative messages about their race. This study constitutes a practice-based mode of inquiry, called Embodied Resonance, into Black girl hood and offers an artistic research project to address the negative impact that the process of racialization has on Black girls. The outward facing outcome of this process was a Marade, the combination of a March and a Parade, that shared the Embodied Resonance practice publicly on the Abele Quad on Duke University’s west campus. During this process, I, along with three first-year Black girl Duke students, explore our past experiences as high schoolers and start to uncover the ways in which we have became who we are today.

My MFAEIP thesis project represents an interdisciplinary integration of spirituality and dance. This thesis is based on a 40-min live performance, animated by my ongoing questioning of how innate spirituality in dance is being suppressed. This claim is, evidenced by the disappearance of numerous sacred dances, the growing emphasis on technical and practical proficiency in dance education and performance, and dance being constrained by a standardized and specific aesthetic. I have personally experienced the suppression of dance education in China, through corporal punishment, and verbal abuse,INFINITE INFANT strives to peel off constraints such as preconceived notions of beauty, prescribed movement patterns, or concern for an audience's preference. My movement praxis, in contrast, seeks to locate the spiritual core of dance by allowing and waiting for unforced and unrestricted movements to emerge. Through my humble perspectives, writings, and performances, I'm trying to call on the audience to rethink dance's meaning, form, and existence while evoking empathy and general reflection on the dance field.

My research project focused on the creation and contextualization of Meshroom, a performance environment with an open dance floor, occasional performances, and live music. It aims to gather interdisciplinary thinkers and movers into a movement-oriented space of experimentation to question the norms that prevail in arts-presenting spaces and to resist hegemonic modes of bodily and social organization. In developing the work, I primarily drew from two embodied disciplines, butoh and social choreography. While using the theoretical and practical understandings of both movement systems to develop the concept, event structure, choreographic and atmospheric prompts, and audience community, I curated Meshroom six times over the course of a year at Duke University. Through curation and repetition as methodology, I developed the “Meshroom Tech Rider,” which proposes five aesthetic conditions that enable Meshroom: a fluid choreographic format, interpersonal and multisensory invitations, autonomous visitors and decentralized language, disruption of the social skin, and care.

Human-caused environmental destruction is the result of a life rhythm that requires numbing to ecological impact. Through my Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis Thesis, I have developed my dance practice, begun a community practice, and curated a performance, portal obscura, all investigating ecological relations through dance. Ecological relation is defined as focusing attention on the relations between living creatures (flora, fauna, fungi, and bacteria) and their environment (including land, air, water, and objects). I propose an ecological dance aesthetic that moves with an expanded sense of time, space, and selfhood while interweaving worlds of reality and imagination. Through this research project, I developed a dance practice that honed my awareness and sensation of self and ecological relationality. I shared my practice in a solo performance, portal obscura, where I invited the audience to traverse the performance space and interact with poetry and sculptures devised to enhance the ecological awareness of situating, observing, and relating. I stress that noticing connections and making communities across differences are essential first steps to a less human-centric environmental ethic.