an introduction to my TOO BIG dance and science mentored advanced project (MAP)

   topic and project description

TOO BIG is a national project intended to use the arts to spur a national dialogue about the economy, access, and opportunity. satellite partners have been engaged on five campuses across the country. these partners are drew university (madison, nj), wayne state (detroit, mi), grinnell college (grinnell, ia), university of north carolina wilmington (wilmington, nc) and university of san diego (san diego, ca). each satellite has a faculty member from that institution’s department of theatre/dance in charge of working with students on the project. using arts-based research methods including story gatherings, interviews, civic engagement workshops and dialogues, the material and data will be crafted into theatre and dance/theatre productions independently created and produced by the satellite partners. however, in a unique collaboration - a website will host and make accessible all material and data gathered from the multiple sites. this sharing of materials (both information and creative contributions) allows students and faculty on each campus to work with one another. at grinnell, celeste miller will be working with dance/theatre students in the fall of 2013 to design and deliver community engagement workshops on the topic of abundance and scarcity.
         i am looking to work with celeste on a two-part MAP, focusing on developing and designing arts-based research methods for teaching and learning in the fall; and using material from those experiences as source material for the creation of an original movement theatre piece to be performed at grinnell college.

  

    relationship of this project to my previous studies

while celeste miller is focusing on “abundance and scarcity” from her aesthetic, i am interested in looking at this topic from a scientific perspective. my goal in the fall is to look at science and dance as both distinct fields and as complements to one another in the interest of learning, teaching, and sharing information. i have refined my perspective to explore the issue of abundance of scientific information pervading throughout our community and society at large, yet the scarcity in its understanding and accessibility.

over the past year i have had the opportunity to further my pursuit of research from a different perspective. i have always been interested in and involved with dance, and last spring i became aware of an opportunity in which my passions in both science and dance were incorporated. the “dance your phd” competition, instigated by a molecular biologist from harvard university, john bohannon, allows scientists from around the world to interpret their doctoral dissertations in dance form. 

the competition parallels his philosophy in that results in research could and should be better disseminated to a larger audience by an approach other than conventional means. as an alternative, he amalgamated dance and science in a way to understand and illustrate scientific research, allowing that which is recondite in science to become more accessible. following this discovery, i found that david odde, a professor of biomedical engineering at the university of minnesota was also doing this type of work with carl flink, a professor of dance and theater, to elucidate the structure and functional roles of microtubules.

                  inspired by their work, i decided to pursue a similar adventure and spent the fall 2012 semester choreographing DNA replication in a way that could be both aesthetically stimulating to a lay audience, yet also explain this intricate scientific process in a different light. this piece was presented in the fall dance ensemble production.

in this vein, i am intending to use this MAP opportunity to further explore and elaborate upon the intersection and integration of science and dance individually, with members of the campus and the grinnell community at large, thus encompassing individuals of all ages and all walks of life.

i will use scientific concepts and ideas combined with research methodologies where movement is the source to conduct my studies, allowing for workshops, individual interactions, and work with groups such as the galaxy inc. youth program in grinnell to gather material that will result in choreo-script development. i am intrigued by learning and teaching science via dance. this non-traditional format is a method to bring more depth, interest, and flexibility of thought to the dancer and non-dancer alike. having researched certain groups and individuals who merge the fields of science and dance, both require non-traditional way of thinking and collaborating to explore new questions, ideas, and problems. while i will be designing the workshops for the children of the galaxy inc. youth program, i intend to work with celeste miller as a leader and guide in these environments given her extensive effort to use dance as a tool for learning throughout the disciplines taught in school, particularly science¹.

in addition to the workshops, i intend to conduct interviews with a number of individuals: students from all backgrounds, interests, and majors, professors in both the sciences and non sciences, community members, alumni, and experts in science and dance not affiliated with grinnell college. i will be using this material with reference to dancing the data (2002), a text by donald blumenfeld-jones and edited by carl bagley and mary beth cancienne that explores the art-research connection that emerges when dance is used as a medium for representation as a method of gathering data². i will be using the opinions of these individuals as inspiration and material for a choreographed dance piece with the dance ensemble during the spring of 2014.

     ¹celeste miller is the co-founder and director of jacob’s pillow curriculum in motion program and directing the choreographers lab at jacob’s pillow since 1995. 

    ²for a project they developed, bagley collected the data on the topic “impact of school choice on families whose children had special education needs.” he conducted interviews and then selected 10 of the interviews as the final dataset for the collaborative project, at which point cancienne was given the data so that she could create a dance that she thought represented it. cancienne constructed an interpretive dance with words in order to preserve parents’ voices and best convey the data. she portrayed the voices in abstract ways (that were nonetheless clear in meaning). for example, at one point a dancer drew the name of a child on the floor with her foot when the parent spoke of the child being unable to write (leavy 191-192).