Making Moves:  Professionalism, Performance, and the Mind/Body Problem in Contemporary American Dance

Dowdy, John Griffin

Making Moves: Professionalism, Performance, and the Mind/Body Problem in Contemporary American Dance

Files

Dowdy_thesis_2013.pdf(3.77 MB)

Dowdy_release_2013.pdf(303.46 KB)

Date

2013

Authors

Dowdy, John Griffin

Advisor

Ghannam, Farha, 1963-

Department

Swarthmore College. Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology

Type

Thesis (B.A.)

Language

en_US

Terms of Use

Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.

Abstract

This investigation looks at the profession of contemporary American concert dance as a site for studying the relationship between the mind and the body. Working with Foucault's model of the docile body, this thesis accepts the traditionally drawn line between ballet and modem dance as a way of highlighting how Foucault's model must be extended to include the kind of 'docility' found in professional modem dance. We examine the learning process in dance to further understand this version of docility, and enter into a discussion of what has come to be known as the mind-body problem. How does the way we conceptualize the relationship between our mind and our body affect the mind-bodies we live in? We conclude that the jobs we hold affect the people we become, not only because of the physical requirements of a career (whether typing or sledge-hammering), but because of the way a certain career influences peoples ways of thinking about and enacting the mind-body relationship. The ultimate thesis is that the individual's perception of the relationship between the mind and the body is a key example of what I will call a self-constructed-correct stance: an opinion-answer formulated by an individual to an otherwise inaccessible question that in meaningful ways informs the 'correctness' of that answer. Finally, we consider the implications of these stances on 'folk theory'. In a society that privileges the mind, what happens when we ask questions - and consider answers - from the body's perspective?