Knowledge Bank

My research investigates diverse understandings of masculinity and how aesthetics that come to define masculinity are mapped onto dancers' bodies and interpreted by dancers between the 1930s and 2020s. I take the work of Ted Shawn as a point of departure, then the works of José Limón and Abby Zbikowski to identify gendered performance onstage over the past century. Plenty of literature argues that the stoicism within Shawn's choreography for his all-male dance company helped legitimize the role of men in contemporary dance. However, to establish a more comprehensive understanding of masculinity, I explore how other choreographers construct masculine choreography for all-gendered bodies. ​For my project, I used existing dance archives for historical insights, worked with contemporary dancers as resources and repositories of knowledge themselves, and considered my bodily archive and the kinesthetic (body-based) knowledge my embodied practice brings to reconceptualizations of masculine aesthetics in dance choreography and performance, as well as new approaches to archival practices informed by dance methodologies.