Binary gender stereotypes infiltrate every space in which people interact in this society; they are instilled in all social behaviors and relationships. The form and intensity of the stereotyping in a particular academic field may influence whether a student enters that field; is affected permanently by the learning environment of that field; and/or, ultimately, is successful in the field . This study looks at the effect the gender binary and sexist stereotypes have on communities of dance education. Historically, dance has been a female-dominated space, yet this is not reflected in equity of opportunity and success across genders in the field. This research identifies societal and cultural behaviors that impact dance communities. To collect information regarding dance culture in academia, surveys were sent to students in collegiate Western Theatrical Dance classes aimed to collect information regarding dance culture in academia. Participants responded to questions about experiences in past dance education settings in comparison to the collegiate community in which they are currently engaged in order to understand what predetermined behaviors and understandings influence their current practices. An extensive literature review of gender effects on individuals in STEM and dance contextualizes the survey responses and shapes the findings of this study. There is a vast gap in the way females and males are taught to behave in order to be respected and successful. The findings of this study suggest communities need to explore ways to decentralize instilled social behaviors in order to provide equal opportunities for growth and success in dance across genders and other identities.

People embody the joy and pain of nature through their own experiences, and have been sharing and cherishing this interconnectedness from time immemorial through paintings, stories, songs, dance, and more. I am a migrant living in a foreign country. i was eating sushi that day…. is a solo dance and an ethnographic research project, exploring ways in which I connect to, resonate with, and embody nature and personal experiences through performance. The awe-inspiring habit of salmon migration sparks my curiosity about the complex and multifaceted nature of human migration. As anadromous fish, salmon spend their juvenile life in rivers, and migrate to the ocean where they spend their adult life. They return to the upstream rivers to reproduce when they reach sexual maturity. Salmon are able to precisely return to their natal river, and even to the very spawning ground of their birth. This creative research explores my questions around identity and the idea of belonging through examining migrating salmon, and my own migrating experiences. What is the definition of home? Is it where you were born, reproduce, and die? Or where you mature? Salmon migrate to optimize their chance of reproduction as it defines their success. What about humans? What are we migrating for? Are we ultimately going to return to where we were from? My creative process starts with producing a soundscore combining text, breathing, and waves. The choreography is inspired by and generated through filmed improvisations as I experiment with different ways to interact with the soundscore and the props, always keeping my research questions in mind. The piece is a product of my desire to understand and reify the fear, confusion, exhaustion, excitement, and hope in the process of migration.

Over the past year, I have conducted movement and personal-narrative-based epistemological research interrogating the gender semantics of manhood versus “male-hood" within our Western society. Borne of the progressively queer politics of gender that define all transgender men as men, as well as the freedom of identity and expression among all individuals that queer theory permits, this research has intended to discover the identity of “man” disconnected from the previous phallic definition. I have observed, physicalized, and self-referentially disrupted forms of masculinity in our society through embodied movement explorations and semantic restructurings, with specific ties to masculinity within my own life and upbringing. More recently this research has primarily focused on the pressures that make manhood an assumed consequence of maleness and what it means to interfere within that predestined process, as well as the associated consequences of doing such. From these investigations, I developed three iterations of physical performance works, the third of which will be presented at this symposium. Each work has come with different conclusions and has revealed areas lacking understanding and/or definition. So, though I am presenting a finalized work, this research remains quite unfinished and never intends to be considered so. Due to the personal nature of this research, this work is only directly applicable within my lived experience and I hesitate to generalize my research to claim any relevance to lives other than my own. My motivation behind this research has always been one of personal discovery, but by sharing it, I hope to expand this research and bring it into a larger conversation than myself.