Original/Creative Research

Research is not  confined to elements of study or through volunteering, as previously mentioned.  Some of my most memorable experiences of research came from utilizing my studies with dance to better emotionally comprehend topics with movement, through creative or original research. Traveling to Paris in spring 2017, allowed me to view the beginnings of ballet and to better understand via travel the research I had done in a class before arriving in Paris helped me comprehend the social status that serves as a cornerstone to ballet as an art form. Seeing the palace of Versailles, the home of King Louis the XIV, the innovator of ballet and the location of beginning ballet performances, I was also able to absorb  the technique and intent meant behind conveying class and status through ballet technique and in the completion of Baroque dance classes I took while in Paris. This research allowed me to grasp the use and history of 17th century dances by royalty and the upper class in the history of Paris.  In my dance composition II class, my junior year, I used a site to provide information for creative research as to how I would structure a self choreographed dance duet. Pictures that I took of an abandoned house near my home in Iowa provided me information as to how to spatially structure the piece on stage. As seen in the pictures below, the many remaining pieces of furniture and clothing within the house with no inhabitants allowed me to create a narrative involving the emotions of vacating a place, while leaving many elements of ourselves behind with no context.  My senior year I was involved in a group dance choreographed by Dr. Julie Kerr-Berry that was presented at the MSU Fall Dance Concert. The piece conceptualized the immigration crisis that has occurred throughout out the world within recent years. As a group with Dr. Kerr-Berry and other dancers, we formulated scenes immigrants faced due to pictures we had found. The scenes among many involved immigrants on boats, fleeing by swimming, attempting to break through walls that kept them confined, and struggling to stay with family members, while carrying their many belongings. The formation of these many elements allowed me to embody the information I had learned about immigration to gain a more personal and emotional understanding of this conflict. I not only better understood information I had researched through creative and original research, but I gained the clarity of how art can transform viewpoints and allow research to be comprehended in a new way. Original/creative research extended by knowledge of my discipline on the power dance holds within cultures to represent status and cultural appreciation throughout history, but also the important, universal stories that can be told through movement. Travel and conducting creative research in dance via the body and images extended my understanding of the research process, first and foremost being that impactful research has no limits. It is not only to gain further knowledge on topics, but to attain an emotional and physical comprehension of  what has been seen, but not hypothesized before.