Performance Presentations

30 Years of Scholarship: A Time Series of Spelman Research Data
As Spelman Research Day celebrates its 30th year, the members of the D.O.P.E. Arts collective have curated a mural that serves as an interactive and artistic data visualization highlighting the scholarship and contributions of our community in the fields of research and arts. This mural will host a time series of artifacts from the 30 years of Spelman Research, as well as, an interactive timeline to demonstrate the quantity and categorization of Spelman publications, performances and installations over the years.
Blanca Burch
Jataysia Daniels
Clloyd Smith

Elly and Zelle--an original play by Maxine Ford--was created for elementary school students and discusses the complexities of friendship--especially those that occur when proper communication does not happen. This story follows Elly, an elephant, and Zelle, a gazelle, who are on a mission to achieve their dreams at Savannah High School. During these pursuits, they incounter issues that test their confidence and character. Through a whirl wind of events, that include lions, tigers, and cheetahs, these friends discover the importance of listening, communicating, and believing in one another. In the end, Elly and Zelle learn that with communication, you can have a healthy friendship, and with a healthy friendship, you can achieve anything.

This research positions dance as ideology for embodying Black culture while dismissng Black bodies. Through cultural appropriation, non-Black dancers have increasingly begun to imitate and impersonate Black aesthetics in the post-modern dance era, most notably in commercialized dance. Based on a socio-historical evoluation of Black performance studies, this research provides discourse that addresses the attempted erasure of Blck women as artists and scholars in the field. In an interdisciplinary analysis - utilizing dance/performance theory, sociological theory, and ethnographic methods - this research encounters ontological and phenomenological understanding of Black dance as a commodified means of policing Black female bodies and identity. The conceptual conclusions of this project, thus, have been choreographed into movement that reflect Black feminist resistance in dance.