TAPS/English
elena rose light (they/them) is a joint PhD student in English and Theater and Performance Studies.
As a scholar-artist, I bring my experience as an experimental choreographer, performer, facilitator, and creative producer to bear on critical theories of particular bodies. My work seeks to explore my (white, trans, not-currently-disabled, imaginary) body as a site of mediation and experimentation; to understand how it and other bodies are affect-ed by social scripts, political formations, and philosophical frameworks; and to identify where agency (if any) might be located within body-based practices. I cemented my understanding of dance and choreography as epistemological pursuits during my MA in Choreography and Performance at Giessen, Germany’s Institute for Applied Theater Studies, researching modes of relational attunement between self and other while creating movement projects in community with other transgender people across Europe. At the University of Chicago, I am excited to embark on a project of reparative study, researching the relationship between somatic practices and scores, US cultural history, and Western philosophies of the body in the wake of colonial corporeal hierarchies.
Photo credit: Alice Nogueira