"...she launched into an explanation of how the dancer’s use of sneakers the second time around recalled the birth of postmodernism, and her words, as always, revealed that thought is inseparable from dance."
"Since coming to Yale — first as an undergraduate, now as the artistic director of the World Performance Project and a lecturer in theater studies — Emily Coates has sought to unite these worlds. ... Performance and academia. Dancing and thinking. In each case, Yale, like other Ivies, has traditionally embraced the second and excluded the first.
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Students and professors offer many theories as to why the Ivy League has resisted dance in the curriculum, ranging from an ingrained conservatism that values classics over modern and interdisciplinary fields to the historical division between the university and the conservatory. But dance historians and experts in performance studies point to two main factors: dance’s status as a traditionally female pursuit, and more importantly, how dance, as an art form rooted in the body, is at odds with a Cartesian mind-body dualism that privileges mental activity as the basis of academia. With a history as all-male institutions that value intellect, the Ivies have been naturally inhospitable to dance, whose peculiar bodily nature sets it apart from other art forms. As Roach notes, "Where you have a text as in drama or music, where you have a printed artifact, it’s easier to see how it can fit in with subjects such as French literature and history."
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