Abstract
Boundaries between artistic disciplines and contexts continue to blur. Museums have become fertile ground for performance-based experimentation, where dancers can engage not only with space and spectators but with visual art itself. This study details the structure and process by which advanced dance majors at one university created and performed solo works in a museum, using current exhibits not merely as backdrops, but as conceptual and physical stimuli that positioned their bodies as sites for both expression and inquiry. This paper discusses the guiding theoretical frameworks, drawing on the phenomenological philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and John Dewey’s theory of aesthetic experience to frame dance-making as an embodied and relational practice, deeply attuned to perception, environment, and experience. Thus, this research considers how dancers engaged with the spatial, aesthetic, and thematic elements of the museum environment to generate meaning through movement. The study provides insight into the pedagogical challenges, benefits, and tensions: how did this work examine traditional separations between viewer/performer and object/exhibit, and between bodily and intellectual ways of knowing? By situating the body in dialogue with visual works, this session underscores how museums are dynamic spaces for performative inquiry, where the act of dancing invites new ways of seeing, feeling, and understanding art for both students and the audience. This paper offers a model for integrating interdisciplinary and movement-based pedagogies into arts-based settings, where the body might also be considered as an intersectional site for perception, critical dialogue, engagement, and connecting to our everyday lived experiences.
Presenters
Christi Camper MooreAssociate Professor of Dance and Head of Arts Administration, College of Fine Arts, Ohio University, Ohio, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Dance, Museums, Embodied Pedagogy, Ways of Seeing, Interdisciplinary
