Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2017, Dance

Dancenoise was created by Lucy Sexton and Anne Iobst after graduating from Ohio University in 1983. They worked as an active part of the downtown dance scene—a group of avant-garde dance artists—where they established themselves as prominent members with a fusion of performance art and dance. Due to the explicit feminist perspective embedded in their work and their prominence in the downtown dance scene, it is curious that they have not been the focus of a dance and feminist studies project. This thesis analyzes two of their works Half a Brain (1988) and Open Season (1996) and argues that Dancenoise disrupts and subverts Western culture's heterosexist attitudes towards the body. There are three theoretical paradigms used to analyze how Sexton and Iobst transgress hegemonic culture. Through gaze theory, particularly male gaze theory, I assert that Sexton and Iobst challenge patriarchal representations of women through their fast-paced scene structure and use of nudity in tandem with dialogue. To further argue that they transgress hegemony, I assert that they disrupt the subjugation and docility of the body in the West by utilizing Michel Foucault's theorizing on “docile bodies”. Furthermore, I use Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity to argue that they challenge and subvert bodily norms of behavior, refuting traditional, sexist ways of using the body. To conclude, I assert that Dancenoise adheres to a poststructuralist decentered subjectivity. This is at the heart of their subversive tendencies.

Committee: Tresa Randall Ph.D (Advisor) Subjects: Dance; Fine Arts; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Dance Studies

Postmodern dance demonstrates characteristics and choreographic conventions that differ radically from those of the commercial theatrical dance that pervades our culture. In this study, I address the question of how people--dancers and choreographers, but especially audience members--make sense of this sometimes arcane and inscrutable dance form. Centering on the April, 2012 performance of choreographer John Jasperse's Canyon at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, I use interviews with Jasperse and his dancers and with audience members as well as my observations of Canyon rehearsals and performances to begin to answer this question. While audience members make the performance meaningful for themselves in diverse ways--social, emotional, intellectual--I focus on the aesthetic sense they make of Canyon. That is, I examine the strategies and codes they employ to interpret the work, to determine its "aboutness." I find that the codes that are most successful, that allow the viewer the most satisfaction and the least frustration, are, like its characteristics, unique to postmodern dance. For example, viewers who are not overly concerned with the choreographer's intention and who employ a logic of metonymy rather than one of metaphor or narrative make sense of Canyon with relative ease. "Dance insiders"--those who are involved in the world of dance themselves and attend concert dance often--employ these strategies more fluently, but I find "dance outsiders" also calling on them in varying measures. In addition, I find that underlying all successful aesthetic meaning-making of Canyon is an ability to discern the formal elements of dance: its spatial configurations, actions, timing, relationships, qualities, and choreographic structures. The implications of this study resonate in concentric circles. They are important for the choreographers and presenters who bemoan the size of the audience for postmodern dance. Awareness of how a dance performance "wor (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: M. Candace Feck (Committee Chair); Karen Eliot (Committee Member); Jan Nespor (Committee Member); Deborah Smith-Shank (Committee Member) Subjects: Dance