I am devising a performance in a gallery that combines interactive video installation and dancers becoming-creature. I postulate that the interactive installation prepares spectators to examine their frame of reference and participate in their own viewing of the live performance. A creative process derived from Deleuzian philosophy of “becoming-animal” removes the need to align with…
Category: Ponderings
Unbecoming Human: An Online Screendance Festival
Curatorial Statement This two-part online screendance festival explores the possibilities and abilities that “unbecoming human” creates. Screendances in part one if the program present unbecoming human through becoming creature. In these screendance pieces, humans perform animality or creature-ness, through movement vocabulary and edited or mediated imagery. While some characters in these films seem limited by…
Not All Diasporas Are Created Equal: The Lebanese Diaspora’s Confinement to Oriental Dance (July 5-8, 2018 in Valletta, Malta)
With funding from the Student Funding Initiative and the Arts and Humanities Small Grants, I am excited to announce that I’ll be presenting my paper, “Not All Diasporas Are Created Equal: The Lebanese Diaspora’s Confinement to Oriental Dance” at the Dance Studies Association conference in Valletta, Malta in July! In this paper, I illuminate a…
Intermedia: Who Has Control?
“Writing in 1966, the American artist, poet and publisher Dick Higgins looked back on recent developments in art and, challenging the legacy of abstraction and expressionism…, noted the emergence during the same period of what he called ‘intermedia’ art, a hybrid form that involved ‘the dialectic between media’, and that was the result of keeping…
Salsa’s Sexuality: Rooted in Racism
This paper reflects my research from before grad school, but it feels relevant to my current research of power structures and stereotypes. Salsa is raging with popularity throughout the world, from Harlem to Bangladesh, people meet, join in rhythm, and dance the night away. Yet, this energetic, enthralling form of dance is often misunderstood and…
Cross-Viewing Audiences Allowed Some Others In
In an effort to understand the American identity and Other identities during the modern era, I have been researching the experiences of two choreographers who are in the modern dance canon against the experiences of Lebanese American immigrants. Here are some of my findings so far. (Note that I have included my entire works cited…
Brianna Rae Johnson 