Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2018, Music Ethnomusicology

The Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira has become an increasingly popular sport in the United States. Capoeira performances consist of a back-and-forth exchange of movements between two players in conjunction with a musical ensemble to accompany the physical display. Since the introduction of capoeira in the United States in the 1970s, capoeira has become the focus of various social institutions. The objective of this thesis is to acknowledge and problematize the impact American culture has made on capoeira aesthetics. The methods for this thesis included research in the fields of ethnomusicology, anthropology, post-colonial theory, and transatlantic studies. Fieldwork was conducted to acquire first hand accounts of capoeira practitioners from the Michigan Center for Capoeira. Lastly, an analysis of the portrayal of capoeira in the media examines how capoeira is showcased to audiences in the United States. Historical accounts, academic discourse, capoeira practitioners, and popular culture reveal how American culture has received capoeira. My research has shown that capoeira culture is represented and interpreted by various groups, such as scholars, American capoeira academies, and the media. These different interpretations have resulted in the displacement, fragmentation, or misrepresentation of capoeira history in the context of American culture. I conclude that dominant social structures have inherently changed how capoeira is discussed in academia, practiced in American academies, and portrayed in the media. Dominant social structures in the United States favor product over process. For capoeira, valuing product over process means highlighting performance and devaluing various Afro-diasporic rituals and practices. My solution to avoid fragmentation and misinterpretation of capoeira culture is to reiterate the importance of the African diaspora to practicing capoeira students in the United States. Acknowled (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kara Attrep (Advisor); Megan Rancier (Committee Member) Subjects: African Studies; Dance; Ethnic Studies; History; Latin American History; Latin American Studies; Music; Music Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Theatre

Declaring burlesque dead has been a habit of the twentieth century. Robert C. Allen quoted an 1890s letter from the first burlesque star of the American stage, Lydia Thompson in Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (1991): “[B]urlesque as she knew it `has been retired for a time,' its glories now `merely memories of the stage.'” In 1931, Bernard Sobel opined in Burleycue: An Underground History of Burlesque Days, “Alas! You will never get a chance to see one of the real burlesque shows again. They are gone forever…” In 1938, The Billboard published an editorial that began, “On every hand the cry is `Burlesque is dead.'” In fact, burlesque had been declared dead so often that editorials began popping up insisting it could be revived, as Joe Schoenfeld's 1943 op-ed in Variety did: “[It] may be in a state of putrefaction, but it is a lusty and kicking decomposition.” It is this “lusty and kicking decomposition” which characterizes the published history of burlesque. Since its modern inception in the late nineteenth century, American burlesque has both been framed and framed itself within this narrative of degeneration. This narrative consistently reaffirms that the burlesque that came before was superior, worthwhile, real, or legitimate, and that the current state of burlesque is dire, on the edge of complete moral and artistic decay. In many ways, this narrative of perpetual degeneracy is burlesque's most salient feature. This dissertation examines the narrative of degeneracy in American burlesque between 1935 and 1972, as it permeates popular culture, impacts the development of the burlesque circuit, and is disrupted or re-interrogated by performers who began operating their own burlesque theaters, offering a cultural study of the stripper in popular discourse, the American burlesque circuit, and the career of Rose La Rose in the hopes of achieving what cultural historian John Storey calls “an active undoing."

Committee: Jennifer Schlueter PhD (Committee Chair); Beth Kattelman PhD (Committee Member); Joy Reilly PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Dance; Performing Arts; Theater; Theater History; Theater Studies; Womens Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Popular Culture

Scholarship on female representations in hip hop has been predominantly premised on the sexualization of the female body. By focusing mainly on this singular aspect of the genre, we reduce the whole essence of womanhood in the industry to such interpretations. The limited scope of such discussions deprives the women of opportunities to tell their own stories of what they do when they dance. Seeing the cultural significance of dance as a form of popular culture in the Nigerian context, this essay, from a feminist perspective, closes this gap by engaging in a qualitative exploration of the lives of three female dancers in Nigeria telling their stories through dance. They are Kaffayat Oluwatoyin Shafau (Kaffy), Odumewu Debbie (Debbiepinkie), and Usiwo Orezinena Jane (Janemena). Exploring their social media archives, interviews granted to TV stations and a published autobiography “Alajoota” by Kaffy, this essay contextualizes and complicates the interpretations of sexualization in the Nigerian hip hop dance industry. Through dance Nigerian women performers are able to negotiate the heavily male-dominated hip hop scene. For them, dance is a coping strategy, a profession, a space for redefining self and embracing sexuality and femininity, and a form of youthful identity and inclusion. Anne Anlin Cheng in Second Skin: asks “How is it we know we are seeing what we think we are seeing? What are the conditions under which we see” (3)? Though theirs is still a negotiated agency, as it is in any society with hierarchies, their dancing taunts and resists patriarchy while working in and around the socio-economic, religious, and cultural contexts of Nigeria. By engaging dancers using academic discourses, we communicate their importance and highlight the social issues of greatest concern to women such as domestic violence, the rate of unemployment, the psychological effects of cultural confinement, and the burdens of stringent gender expectations.

Committee: Angela Nelson (Advisor); Jeremy Wallach (Committee Member); Rahdika Gajjala (Committee Member) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology; Dance

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Dance Studies

Since its premiere, YouTube has rapidly emerged as the most important venue shaping popular dance practitioners and consumers, introducing paradigm shifts in the ways dances are learned, practiced, and shared. YouTube is a technological platform, an economic system, and a means of social affiliation and expression. In this dissertation, I contribute to ongoing debates on the social, political, and economic effects of technological change by focusing on the bodily and emotional labor performed and archived on the site in videos, comments sections, and advertisements. In particular I look at comments and fan video as social paratexts which shape dance reception and production through policing genre, citationality, and legitimacy; position studio dance class videos as an Internet screendance genre which entextualizes the pedagogical context through creative documentation; and analyze the use of dance in online advertisements to promote identity-based consumption. Taken together, these inquiries show that YouTube perpetuates and reshapes established modes and genres of production, distribution, and consumption. These phenomena require an analysis that accounts for their multivalence and the ways the texts circulating on YouTube subvert existing categories, binaries, and hierarchies. A cyclical exchange—between perpetuation and innovation, subculture and pop culture, amateur and professional, the subversive and the neoliberal—is what defines YouTube and the investigation I undertake in this dissertation.

Committee: Harmony Bench PhD (Advisor); Katherine Borland PhD (Committee Member); Karen Eliot PhD (Committee Member); Ryan Skinner PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Criticism; Communication; Dance; Ethnic Studies; Intellectual Property; Mass Media; Performing Arts; Technology; Web Studies

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2017, Theatre

The Radio City Rockettes are one of the most famous dance troupes in the United States, having performed at Radio City Music Hall since 1932. This thesis serves as the first stand-alone, expansive history about who they are, what they represent, and how they developed under the leadership of founder Russell Markert (1899-1990). This study will trace how the Rockettes began as an emblem of modernity and developed into a symbol of nostalgia under the leadership of one man from their Missouri inception in 1925 through his retirement in 1971. Intrinsically linked to the design and vision of Radio City Music Hall, the company was a symbol of American ingenuity and national pride. As an embodiment of industry, precision dance was first introduced by the British Tiller Girls, and codified by Markert into a technique that Rockettes still carry on today. Besides their iconic status, Rockettes also benefitted from the familial environment of Radio City Music Hall and paternal affections of Markert, both which contributed to a workplace that offered stability, safety, and a dependable income to the women who sought an independent life in the dance world. This line of thirty-six dancers who perform as one unit will reach its centennial anniversary in 2025, and their longevity demands a closer look at why they remain beloved despite fluctuations in popularity and what they have represented to the American people throughout the decades.

Committee: Jennifer Schlueter PhD (Advisor); Shilarna Stokes PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Dance; Theater History; Theater Studies

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2010, Music Ethnomusicology

Disco-rock, composed of disco-influenced recordings by rock artists, was a sub-genre of both disco and rock in the 1970s. Seminal recordings included: David Bowie's Young Americans; The Rolling Stones' “Hot Stuff,” “Miss You,” “Dance Pt.1,” and “Emotional Rescue”; KISS's “Strutter '78,” and “I Was Made For Lovin' You”; Rod Stewart's “Do Ya Think I'm Sexy“; and Elton John's Thom Bell Sessions and Victim of Love. Though disco-rock was a great commercial success during the disco era, it has received limited acknowledgement in post-disco scholarship. This thesis addresses the lack of existing scholarship pertaining to disco-rock. It examines both disco and disco-rock as products of cultural shifts during the 1970s. Disco was linked to the emergence of underground dance clubs in New York City, while disco-rock resulted from the increased mainstream visibility of disco culture during the mid seventies, as well as rock musicians' exposure to disco music. My thesis argues for the study of a genre (disco-rock) that has been dismissed as inauthentic and commercial, a trend common to popular music discourse, and one that is linked to previous debates regarding the social value of pop music. The result is a study that compiles the work of previous disco scholars and provides a first step towards the study of disco-rock within the social and musical culture of the 1970s.

Committee: Jeremy Wallach PhD (Advisor); Katherine Meizel PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Music