Type of Document	Thesis
Author	Gay, Patricia L.
Author's Email Address	plg09@fsu.edu
URN	etd-04082011-193141
Title	The Naked Truth: An Analysis of Nudity in American Avant-Garde Dance of the Twenty-First Century
Degree	Master of Arts
Department	Dance, Department of
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Tricia H. Young Committee Chair Gerri Houlihan Committee Member Jennifer Atkins Committee Member Sally R. Sommer Committee Member
Keywords	Nudity Nakedness Dance Miguel Gutierrez Takashi Koma Yamada Ann Liv Young Anna Halprin Noemie Lafrance
Date of Defense	2011-04-01
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract In the past decade there has been a resurgence of experimental dance artists in the United States using nakedness—especially utilizing their own nude bodies—in choreography. In an effort to discover why this trend is reemerging now and how nudity is functioning in new ways in the world of twenty-first century avant-garde American dance, this thesis critically investigates five works of choreography as case studies. The first chapter introduces my main ideas, gives a brief history of nudity in avant-garde dance and outlines the format for the rest of the thesis. The second chapter investigates grotesque and carnivalesque uses of nakedness in Ann Liv Young’s Cinderella. The third chapter investigates two radically different ways of relating the bare female body and environment through analyzing Anna Halprin’s Returning Home: Moving With the Earth Body and Noémie Lafrance’s Home: the Body as a Place. The fourth chapter focuses on how male dancers refute, transgress and move beyond the cultural taboo of male bodily exposure through studying Miguel Gutierrez’s myendlesslove and Eiko Otake Yamada and Takashi Koma Yamada’s Naked. Finally, the thesis closes by posing some potential political, economic, cultural and scientific reasons why nudity has been reappearing in choreography over the past ten years and highlighting a new use of nudity as a mediating tool in the five aforementioned works
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