Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Dancing'

This Master’s thesis implements a multiple paired models architecture that is used to control a simulated robot. The architecture consists of several modules. Each module holds a paired forward/inverse model. The inverse model takes as input the current and desired state of the system, and outputs motor commands that will achieve the desired state. The forward model takes as input the current state and the motor commands acting on the environment, and outputs the predicted next state. The models are paired, due to the fact that the output of the inverse model is fed into the forward model. A weighting mechanism based on how well the forward model predicts determines how much a module will influence the total motor control. The architecture is a slight tweak of the HAMMER and MOSAIC architectures of Demiris and Wolpert, respectively. The robot is to imitate dance moves that it sees. Three experiments are done; in the first two the robot imitates another robot, whereas in the third experiment the robot imitates a movement pattern gathered from human data. The pattern was obtained using a Pro Reflex tracking system. After training the multiple paired models architecture, the performance and self-organization of the different modules are analyzed. Shortcomings with the architecture are pointed out along with directions for future work. The main results of this thesis is that the architecture does not self-organize as intended; instead the architecture finds its own way to separate the input space into different modules. This is also most likely attributed to a problem with the learning of the responsibility predictor of the modules. This problem must be solved for the architecture to work as designed, and is a good starting point for future work.

This research investigates Taiwanese dancers? practice of international folk dancing through interviews and participant-observation. International folk dancing is a specific dance genre, in which its practitioners explore various regional folk dances around the world, regardless of their ethnicities. I define this practice as a transnational embodiment, because it not only covers folk dances from different countries, but also was a government-sanctioned exercise during the Taiwanese Martial Law Period (1945-1987). Furthermore, many Taiwanese immigrants in California are still practicing this dance for the purpose of connecting with people with similar backgrounds. In this regard, international folk dancing is a historical product from Taiwan?s Martial Law Period, and it also functions as an instrument to scrutinize some Taiwanese immigrants? conceptions of national and cultural identity in California. My dissertation starts from post-World War II Taiwan, when international folk dancing was introduced from the United States and became a mass exercise of the Taiwanese people during Martial Law. For the National Government at this time, international folk dancing was a means of presenting Taiwan?s political alignment with the United States. For the Taiwanese people, however, this dance form was a way to understand the outside world under extreme limitations on information access outside Taiwan during Martial Law. My investigation then shifts to Taiwanese immigrants? current practice of international folk dancing in California. Though these immigrants do not limit their practice to Taiwan-specific dances and are embodying cultures of others, international folk dancing is a strong transnational embodiment that enables these Taiwanese immigrants to reconstruct their idea of home in the United States and to present a new definition of Taiwanese identity through practicing others? nationalisms. Furthermore, I demonstrate that Taiwanese dancers of different generations in both regions are constantly constructing the notions of ?folk? and ?international? through their diverse living and dancing experiences. I argue that international folk dancing challenges these concepts when compared to previous scholars? examinations. Additionally, this dance form demonstrates its practitioners? cultural awareness that even though the practice seems to be inclusive, its dancers are much aware of issues of authenticity, appropriation, and cross-cultural politics. Finally, this sub-genre of self-choreographed dancing indicates a Taiwanized international folk dancing practice. Self-choreographed dancing was developed by the Taiwanese international folk dancing community during the Martial Law Period, and in California, it is practiced more in the Taiwanese international folk dancing groups but is missing in Western dancers? community. As this sub-genre stretches the ideas of ?folk,? ?international,? and the sense of cultural awareness, the dissertation also explores this difference between Taiwanese and Western international folk dancing communities to emphasize the notion of Taiwanese-ness. International folk dancing serves to scrutinize relationships between Taiwan and the United States after World War II. Meanwhile, California-based Taiwanese immigrants apply their past dancing memories to their current practice of international folk dancing, suggesting new definitions to existing conceptions of Taiwanese identity. Moreover, the unstableness in the dance form?s translations in Mandarin Chinese?tu-feng-wu or shi-jie min-su wu-dao?indicates that there is no consistent understanding of ?folk,? ?international,? and even ?international folk dancing? itself. The lack of coherent translation furthermore signals varied interpretations of Taiwanese-ness by Taiwanese people from different places and of different generations.

The practice of rueda casino (or salsa casino ) has increased worldwide in the last four decades, and the physical, psychological, and psychosocial effects of this dance may improve the health and wellness of participants. There is limited literature defining rueda casino as a social dance and previous findings are from interventions with Latin dance practices. This qualitative description focused on the nature of rueda casino integrating perspectives of archival data from interviews with three experts and the researcher's observations on this partnered and group dance in Mexico City. The findings present rueda casino as a form of dance that has a beneficial impact on the participant's body, self-confidence, cross-gender identity, social integration, and social being, and it opens up possibilities for further research to consider rueda casino as part of an integrative approach to wellness.

La práctica de rueda casino (o salsa casino) ha incrementado a nivel mundial en las últimas cuatro décadas, y los efectos físicos, psicológicos y psicosociales de este baile pueden mejorar la salud y bienestar de los participantes. La literatura que describe rueda casino como un baile social es limitada y resultados previos se limitan a estudios con intervenciones con prácticas de baile Latino. Esta descripción cualitativa se enfoca en la esencia de rueda casino. Integra perspectivas, sobre esta forma de baile en pareja y grupal, obtenidas de información archivada en entrevistas a tres expertos y las observaciones de la investigadora en la Ciudad de México. Los resultados muestran que la forma de baile rueda casino tiene un impacto que beneficia al participante en aspectos físicos, de autoconfianza, de identidad de género, de integración social, y ser social. Adicionalmente, abre posibilidades para futuras investigaciones que consideren rueda casino como parte de un acercamiento integral al bienestar.

The performativity of dance relies on the the power that different dance practices and choreographies have to shape culture, “making and unmaking” identities by “molding” the moving body (Franko, 2012). While theorists have connected dance technique and instruction to the perpetuation of larger cultural and historical ideologies, few methods yet have attempted a critical study of how performative impact is connected to a dancer’s own embodied experience.

Working from an understanding of embodied experience as central to the performative impact of dance, my research examines the dancing body’s role in constructing its own performativity. I begin with an analysis of how choreography “does” performativity, looking at historical changes in dance theory over time that have led to the imperative to examine agency specifically in relation to individually experienced embodiment. Current scholarship on the status of the 21st century contemporary dancer recognizes this need to study individual embodiment; dancers are creative agents within the choreographic process, able to alter the performative impact of a piece on the basis of how they learn or embody the movement. In order to substantiate this understanding of the dancing body’s agency, my research culminates in an interview project that includes dancers’ voices and lived experiences together with scholarship that prescribes agency and performativity to the moving body. Tracking a group of dancers through the process of learning new choreography, I attempt a method of understanding the moving body itself as communicative agent. The philosophical field of phenomenology supports such an understanding, viewing the body as having its own consciousness and perspective. In addition to phenomenology, I use critical ethnography and oral history practices to construct a reflexive interview process and affect theory to conduct a deep analysis of the dancers’ descriptions. Affect, being defined as those intensities, feelings and forces at the base of personal experience and social patterns, offers a way of comprehending dancers’ felt sense of embodiment from their own perspective.

An examination of affect within the dancers’ descriptions shows how the dancers’ linguistic moves parallel their diverse kinesthetic experiences of learning movement. The dancers’ heightened kinesthetic awareness throughout the process of learning choreography demonstrates how they experience their bodies in a different phenomenological way and ultimately how they enact performative impact through their very processes of embodiment. The resulting interviews, transcriptions and discussion in this project support practice-based research, in the form of phenomenologically-centered and analyzed interviews, as a way to include dancers’ embodied experiences in studies of the dancing body’s performativity.

Reference: Franko, Mark. "Dance and the Political: States of Exception." Dance. Ed. André Lepecki. London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2012. 145-48. Print.