O'Donnell's Open-Form Composition (OFC): A Possible Stance to Abridge the Divide Improvisation-Composition in Dance?

Abstract

This thesis investigates how the colloquial understanding of the notion of spontaneity has been used both to describe dance improvisation and to differentiate it from dance composition. I argue that spontaneity alone neither fully describes nor differentiates the two, and that the stance and language of O’Donnell’s ‘Open-Form Composition’ offers a more accurate and suitable way to articulate not only the differences between dance improvisation and composition but how they are implicated one in the other, allowing therefore for more precision in the articulation of what is at stake in each particular instance. This investigation has been done by means of an analysis of how a selection of dance artists and scholars have, mostly in writing, articulated this tension.