Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Dance Studies

This dissertation examines the dance studio and its built environment, exploring the dynamic relationship between dance and space. The focal point is the concept of the dance studio, analyzed through the urban landscapes and the experimental art practices in the city of Zagreb from the 1950s to the 2010s. The study investigates the dance studio through the histories of spatial structures, dance history, and the history of cinema. Shaped by these processes, dance is specifically entangled with spatial structures and is expanded by their horizons, outcomes, and histories. The dance studio here is a hypothesis built in the process—a space that exists at the intersection of context and time, with dance emerging as an archival record embedded in spatial and societal change. The dissertation argues that this very process constitutes the dance studio's structure: a space, practice, and environment made possible—reimagined, shaped, and hypothesized through the lens of dance and its experimental inquiry. The study approaches the dance studio from the vantage point of the long contemporaneity, extending across both modernism and postmodernism while facilitating the juxtaposition and productive friction of these terms. The city of Zagreb is approached as a dynamic multitude, encompassing a range of developments in the socialist and post-socialist periods that influenced, challenged, and shaped art, dance artists, and their spaces between 1949 and 2010.

Committee: Harmony Bench (Committee Chair); Hannah Kosstrin (Committee Member); Philip Armstrong (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture; Art History; Dance; East European Studies; European History; European Studies; Film Studies; Modern History; Performing Arts; Philosophy; Slavic Studies; Theater Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2005, Art (Fine Arts)

This dissertation explores the images of the Middle Eastern and North African dancer, also known as raqisah sharqi, almeh, and belly dancer, and the role of Western and Eastern male artists in developing her persona. It argues that Jean-Leon Gerome, Oscar Wilde, and Farid al-Atrash position the dancer according to their own agendas and persuade the viewers to gaze at her to advance their art. Al-Atrash, however, enables the dancer to suggest elements other than her sexuality when she dances to his music. The artworks of these artists are examined through the theory of the gaze, the postcolonial double marginalization of women, and the discourse of Orientalism. The representations of the almeh in Gerome's paintings are also explored via methods of feminist art historians that advocate interpretation through the examination of cultural and political context. This methodology reveals the effect of the Middle East in the development of Gerome's realistic style and exposes his bourgeois inclination, which is similar to Ingres and Delacroix, in portraying nude women and prostitutes. Gerome's almeh complements the representations of Eastern women by other Orientalists. The exotic dancer also attracted Western women, who liked her freedom and at the time were demanding their rights in the early twentieth century. Consequently, these women forced the film industries to cater to their needs. In response, the silent cinema offered them Rudolf Valentino as a sheik to satisfy their emotional and sexual wishes and to restore patriarchal power. Such films portray destructive aspects of Eastern cultures and emphasize Western supremacy. Other films reveal the special circumstances whereby a Western woman is permitted to adopt the Eastern dancer, who represents the femme fatale, as her ideal. The Egyptian cinema imitates Western art and presents the early Eastern dancer as an Arab femme fatale. Farid al-Atrash changes this image by presenting Samia Gamal as an artist worthy of intern (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Charles Buchanan (Advisor) Subjects: