Author: Ewurama Cann

Student Name:
Ewurama Cann

Project Link:
https://mediathread.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/s/CUdnce3985_001/project/51252/

Statement: This project explores the relationship between gaze and dance. It analyzes the importance and use of gaze in our day to day lives and how Jerome Robbins used the conceptual theories about gaze to further his own choreography. Through intent gaze and planned eye contact Robbins is able to add a new dimension of intrigue and drama to his dances. This course in tandem with the New York Public Library has helped me gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for dance.

Student Name:
Andrea Patella

Project Link:
https://mediathread.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/course/1233/project/view/51245

Statement: My project examines Jerome Robbins’ use of play and humor on the ballet and musical theatre stage, and their distinct effects in each venue. Robbins has a unique talent for developing story and character through the use of human movement. Recognizable movement infuses a sense of populism and accessibility to his works of ballet, repudiating expectations of what should be on a ballet stage. His use of play, comedy, and defined facial expressions is expected in musical theatre, but adds an enthralling excitement to ballet. While his developed characters can toe the line of becoming tropes, they provide discernible themes and assist in plot advancement. It is important to view Robbins’ character and plot work with a critical eye, considering the intricate effects of his choreographic decisions on different audiences. With the help of the New York Public Library’s Digital Collections and the ability to analyze fleeting moments of choreography and performance, I was able to identify the effects of Jerome Robbins’ use of human movement and humor in his works.  

Student Name:
Yuval Dinoor

Project Link:
https://mediathread.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/s/CUdnce3985_001/project/51255/

Statement: For this assignment, I’ve examined the role dance played in American diplomacy with communist Europe in the mid-twentieth century, and more specifically, how Ballets USA’s 1958-1962 tour of Eastern Europe played into that. Dance diplomacy was a platform that shaped the way American identity was conceived on a global stage by embodying key values of Americanness on the physical stage. Particularly through disseminating jazz dance in ballet-centric Europe, Jerome Robbins’ Ballets USA choreography offered an oppositional vision of culture liberated from regulations and standards, posing a counter voice to communist social values. I’m interested in this tour and its impacts upon European audiences because it fits into a larger conversation of dance being used as a political tool via cultural diplomacy, starting in the Cold War yet also extending into modern day.

To guide my research of how traits of Americanism influenced Robbins’ choreography, I examined primary and secondary sources that offered insights as to Robbins’ vision of American characteristics and values, and juxtaposed those against my choreographic analysis of Interplay and N.Y. Export Opus Jazz, two pieces he created in 1958 for Ballets USA’s Spoleto tour. Finally, I was curious to see how Ballets USA’s work was received by European audiences, particularly in regards to perceptions they gleaned of Americanness from watching the performance; for this purpose, I examined clippings of newspaper reviews of Ballets USA’s 1958-1962 performances at the New York Public Library’s Performing Arts Archive.  

Student Name:
Amelia Haynes

Project Link:
https://mediathread.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/s/CUdnce3985_001/project/51215/

Statement: Watching Jerome Robbins’s choreographic works, I found myself captivated by how he stages conflict in such a compelling and seemingly natural fashion. I began to analyze the development of conflict in a variety of his ballets, in an attempt to better understand the choices that underlie his success. The possibilities afforded by the Mediathread tool, such as the ability to juxtapose videos, enabled me to illuminate the similarities in how he stages conflict across his various ballets. Further, personal choreographic notes, interviews, and initial reviews of ballets accessed in the Jerome Robbins archives at the Dance Division of the New York Public Library furthered my understanding of how and why Robbins appears to give his dancers tremendous agency in his ballets. 

Student Name:
Maya Weiss

Project Link:
https://mediathread.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/s/CUdnce3985_001/project/51258/

Statement: Jerome Robbins’ choreography transgresses a variety of sexual norms, straying from the ballet standards of repressed heterosexual behavior. However, a close analysis of his choreographic choices reveals the strategies necessary to display these taboos on stage. NY Export: Opus Jazz, Goldberg Variations, and Afternoon of a Faun each display a different type of sexual rebellion. In each instance, Robbins uses a different aspect of dance convention to portray radical sexuality in an acceptable way. This project uses videos of Robbins’ work as quotations. Each excerpt reveals a compositional strategy Robbins used. These short moments reveal the ways Robbins both celebrated and restricted sexual desire on stage. The majority of dance scholarship relies on descriptions of choreography to support an argument. By using Mediathread as a tool for video quotation, the dance can speak for itself.   

Student Name:
Emily Young

Project Link:
https://mediathread.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/s/CUdnce3985_001/project/51415/

Statement: Robbins’ Les Noces: Choreographing Counter-McCarthyism” analyzes Les Noces (1963) through the lens of McCarthyism to understand the salience of Robbins’ identity to the ballet’s Russian subjectivity. In addition to primary research from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Jerome Robbins Dance Division and biographical attention to Robbins’ House of Un-American Activities (HUAC) trial, this project is bolstered by the affordances of Mediathread. Visually juxtaposing Robbins’ choreography with Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces (1936) enables us to better evaluate Robbins’ originality and to observe how his particular perspective comes through in his choreography. 

Student Name:
Juliana DeVaan

Project Link:
https://mediathread.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/s/CUdnce3985/project/40752

Statement: As an intern at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Jerome Robbins Dance Division, my semester research project evolved into an in-depth archival project in which I analyzed data collected from Loie Fuller’s collection of programs and newspaper clippings. My understanding of Fuller’s artistic community grew massively as I began to see her in relation to the many people with whom she performed, communicated, and collaborated. My project became an exhibition at LPA, a blog post, and a Mediathread composition, which forced me to think about the relationship between the physical archive and digital access in a way I had not before. Because of my exhibition, all of the programs in the Loie Fuller collection (as well as all the photographs and ephemera I pulled for the display) will be digitized, and the next group of “Digital Footprints” students will be able to utilize these resources digitally.

Student Name:
Anna Haas

Project Link:
https://mediathread.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/s/CUdnce3985/project/40753

Statement:  This course has expanded my interpretation of the words “dance research” by introducing me to a variety of resources and methods I can now use to examine dance movement, history, and spectatorship. The tools presented to me throughout the class (such as the New York Public Library archival materials, Mediathread, and Adobe Premiere) enabled me to analyze Anna Pavlova and the concept of feminism through movement analysis and archival accounts of her actions and portraits. My project reflects the opportunity to examine a very theoretical concept (feminism in ballet) through movement and concrete physical evidence. This course has introduced the possibilities for further collaboration across several different mediums of dance research.

Student Name:
Juliana DeVaan

Project Link:
https://mediathread.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/s/CUdnce3985/project/40752

Statement:  “Sculpting in Time, Space, and the Dancing Image” is an exploration in merging artistic media through the digital humanities. Analyzing dance on film is difficult without a side-by-side form of reference–this composition attempts to merge analytic, interpretive research of Loie Fuller and her “Serpentine Dance” through the lens of her creative relationship with Auguste Rodin by providing immediate visual reference and comparison of the two artists’ work and their relationship as presented in the “Loie Fuller Collection” at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Jerome Robbins Dance Division.