CAN’T TAKE MY FEEL GOOD

Abstract

MFA in Dance Thesis choreography Can’t Take My Feel Good is part of a larger project rooted in community-building and joy-making. This thesis dance was made into a dance film and performed live at a street dance jam titled “Fresh Kicks” held at Aloha Dance Sport in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. Producing “Fresh Kicks” was the culmination of nine months of practice as research. The research encompasses the generating of joy, pleasure, and resistance through participation in the street dance community on Oʻahu and within the physical movement and social aspects of Hip Hop and House dance. As street dance jams already employ joy-making strategies and forms of resistance, producing a jam at which the thesis choreography would be performed ultimately contributed to a larger community effort. Although the original thesis proposal offers a choreographic approach with sections that represent the concepts of resistance, pleasure, and joy, the final thesis choreography operationalizes them more complexly. The five sections of the dance, Systems, Dreaming, Feelin It Out, Find That Thing, and Found Us are centered on what is generated by the dancing in itself: the physical action and social interaction. Rather than representing resistance, the dancing in Systems and Dreaming actively resists through freestyle and intentional observation. The movement in Feelin It Out is generated through the seeking of pleasure. Find That Thing solidifies the collective on the foundation of the resistance built and pleasure felt. The freestyle and social dancing in Found Us actualize their joy-making potential. While the dance film is a documentation of this process, the performance of Can’t Take My Feel Good in conjunction with “Fresh Kicks” realized the exponential potential of the process.