2022 Symposium for Student Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

The dance community struggles to address dancers' mental and physical wellbeing, causing negative effects that could lead to anxiety, depression, body image and self-esteem issues. Dancers' mental and physical health take a toll when they are taught to place their physical bodies above their mental and emotional health. Dance educators focus on bettering dancers' physical movement yet are not so attentive when it comes to supporting the rigor and intensity that comes with. How can we erase the stigma around dance and mental health by creating a nonjudgmental environment that honors dancers' emotional and physical wellbeing? To complete this research, I used many peer reviewed articles to analyze the positive benefits dance improvisation and Ruth Zaporah's, "Action Theater" has on dancers. Throughout my research I found that improvisation as well as the skills learned in "Action Theater" help dancers increase mindfulness, self-agency, self-awareness and emotional expression, all aspects that improve one's mental and physical health. I found that dance artists such as Ruth Zaporah effectively accomplish this with improvisation, Buddhist practices, and setting mental and physical limits. I argue that the dance community can address and better support mental health through improvisation and mind-body centering techniques. In my presentation, I will examine Ruth Zaporah's Physical Theater method called "Action Theater," and improvisational exercises used to support dancers' mental health as consideration for dance curricular at the collegiate level.

This project investigates the integration of dance improvisation in the choreographic process. Specifically, it explores contact improvisation, improvisation to create movement material and improvisation with costume. Contact Improvisation is a partner dance form based on the physical principles of touch, weight, and momentum. This practice explores ideas such as falling, rolling, counterbalance, being lifted and lifting. Over the course of 25 hours, a six-minute duet dance was created. During the choreographic process, many methods were used to learn and incorporate improvisation skills into a dance piece. Methods such as watching archival videos on Contact Improvisation, skill development, game structures, and verbal prompts inspired movement improvisation. An additional element of improvisation with bubble wrap costumes contributed to heightened auditory and tactile senses, increasing movement possibilities. This creative process has resulted in new knowledge about the dance form of improvisation and how to integrate it into choreography. This duet will be performed publicly at the BFA dance concert in Stoner Studio Theater on April 23, 2022.