Dance and community: A new focus for dance appreciation courses

An undergraduate course, for general education programs, called Dance and Community can be developed, utilizing a new central focus for dance appreciation. This focus would be on the role traditional dance plays in individual and community survival for immigrant groups in the United States, and how such traditional material is used by contemporary choreographers to make new artistic statements. To more fully understand this premise, the research for this thesis focused on the work of Jeff Rebudal, an American contemporary choreographer of Philippine ancestry. Rebudal's art serves as a paradigm of cross-cultural fusion. The research also focused on the Philippine traditional dance Sinulog , and how it was translated by the Diaspora experience. By incorporating the research methodology used to study the Filipino population in the Greater Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area, it is possible to come to an understanding of the contributions to dance and culture offered by other immigrant groups in the United States.