Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Dancing in the Seminary: Reconstructing Dances for a 1749 Viceregal Peruvian Opera

Murray, Peggy L.
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1737-3586
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1448985385

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts).
This study explores the dance characteristics and aesthetics likely employed in Venid, venid deydades, a performance piece from mid-eighteenth-century Cusco, Peru. This seminary opera by Fray Esteban Ponce de Leon was composed and performed in the Seminary of San Antonio Abad to honor its rector, who was named Bishop of Paraguay. The music and libretto for the work are extant in the Seminary’s archive, yet its choreography is unknown--a common condition that impedes the understanding of dance in its historical context. This study unites diverse textual and embodied resources to re-create dances consistent with the opera’s style. Theoretically, this study analyzes the task of early dance reconstruction using Diana Taylor’s conception of the archive--historical textual material--and of the repertoire--unwritten embodied information that societies pass down over time. The methodological aim of the study is to provide an explained model for the process of historically informed early dance reconstruction; thus, a minuet and contradanza are reconstructed in Chapter Five. Such reconstructions inform historical performance and provide a way to investigate dance history. This understudied opera emanates from a vibrant era of varied performance genres in Peru’s culturally diverse colonial period. It reflects the powerful, official world of elite Spanish and criollo ecclesiastical circles. This investigation thus examines European Baroque dance and its archive and repertoire, as Bourbon-era tastes in Peru reflected the Spanish and continental affinity for Italian music and French dance. The research considers the roles of archive and repertoire in this dance style’s preservation and in its loss from practice, both in Europe and in Peru. This study makes use of a historical and ethnographic methodology to guide the researcher in re-animating dances of the past. As such, it connects and interprets remains through historical and aesthetic analysis (including Laban Movement Analysis). Examining the contributions of both textual and kinesthetic sources allows us to question the functioning of both types of repositories in preserving dance information and consider their links to cultural memory.
Marina Peterson, PhD (Committee Co-Chair)
Tresa Randall, PhD (Committee Co-Chair)
248 p.
Cultural Anthropology; Dance; Fine Arts; Folklore; History; Latin American History; Music; Performing Arts; Theater History
dance; Peru; history; Baroque; colonial Peru; performance; dance reconstruction; historically informed performance; eighteenth-century performance; historical ethnography; cultural ethnography; historical anthropology; folklore

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Murray, P. L. (2015). Dancing in the Seminary: Reconstructing Dances for a 1749 Viceregal Peruvian Opera [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1448985385

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Murray, Peggy. Dancing in the Seminary: Reconstructing Dances for a 1749 Viceregal Peruvian Opera. 2015. Ohio University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1448985385.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Murray, Peggy. "Dancing in the Seminary: Reconstructing Dances for a 1749 Viceregal Peruvian Opera." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1448985385

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ohiou1448985385
2,649
© 2015, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.