Facultry of Graduate Studies

Project portfolio management (PPM) is an important area of interest in many organizations. There is a wide literature on each of many different aspects of PPM. The central purpose of the current paper is to focus on a specific sub-area of PPM, namely the project portfolio selection (PPS) problem. Specifically, we develop a new methodology that will aid management in choosing from a set of candidate project proposals, a subset of those project proposals that align with strategic objectives of the organization. Research methodology is based on the data envelopment analysis (DEA) construct to compare a set of decision making units (such as proposed projects) to arrive at an efficiency score for each member of this competing set, derive the best performers, generate an efficiency frontier and quantify inefficiency in the non-best performers. While DEA has been applied in numerous settings, the unique feature of the project portfolio application is the presence of two sets of data, namel...

Collaboration can be temporal. This presentation gathers pieces of Isadora Duncan’s ideas on dance education as expressed in her own voice through primary source material, the works of her students, and questionnaire responses gathered from current Duncan based practitioners, and examines them alongside the educational philosophies of John Dewey. The tone of Duncan’s passionate remarks on dance and the education of children can seem somewhat romantic or pontifications – but the word pontificate comes from the Latin roots of pons (bridge) and facere (to do, to make) eliciting an arc towards action. 
John Dewey notes, “ … the principle of continuity of experience means that every experience both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of those which come after.” (Experience and Education p.35) Like Duncan’s desire to look back to the Greeks and forward to her vision of the dancer of the future, we as dance educators may find ourselves at impasses between old and new – between the dance icons and histories we admire and the desire to find contemporary relevance rather than harbour them as nostalgic references.
In addition to connecting Duncan and Dewey’s work, this presentation discusses current initiatives in the field of Duncan based movement education and speculates the ways in which Duncan’s philosophies could further extend towards innovation in the field of dance education.  More broadly it aims to bring forward a theoretical framework for connecting past discourses in dance and education as a means of creating space for and informing contemporary approaches to teaching and learning. As dance educators we embody our past training, how can we collaborate with the mosaic of our own histories to create rich educational opportunities for our students?

In 2012, Toronto based contemporary dance company, Dancemakers, presented The Adaptation Project - a new choreography that took American choreographer and filmmaker, Mitchell Rose’s 1974 choreography Following Station Identification, as a starting point for creation. Examining The Adaptation Project as a case study, this research explores fidelity analysis between the adaptation and the adapted text, and asks what is the function of adaptation in contemporary choreography? Through connecting Dance and Adaptation Studies with theories concerning time, and affect, The Adaptation Project extends beyond Trent’s analogy of a cover song, to reveal changes in cultural contexts, approaches and attitudes towards choreography, and the shifting shape of the Toronto contemporary dance community. In addition, The Adaptation Project’s evocation of Dancemakers’ formative years acts as a performative utterance revealing the identity and character of Dancemakers as an organization and cultural institution.

How do we enfold the excess we inherit from previous generations? If affect, as Sarah Ahmed proposes, sticks to objects, than how do we handle the remnants of what has come before? In this research paper I explore the Barrie Antiques Centre as a cultural site to investigate nostalgia as affect. Mobilizing Ahmed, it explores affect as not just a trajectory towards the end goal of happiness, but as a double back path – a mixed state of pleasure and melancholic longing.  Using the ideas put forward by Marusya Bociurkiw and Lawrence Grossberg, this research explores how the perceived value of objects are mediated in relation to cultural identity – given that many antiques were former products of pop culture.  Combined with Ahmed, these concepts may explain how a collective cultural memory is perpetuated through the items we keep and assign value.  Given the exploratory nature of the site, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwicks’ work on the texture will be addressed to understand what is expressed by what we have access to touch. Finally, this paper speculates on the ways in which artist’s evoke nostalgia, consciously or not, in their means of production through ‘upcycling’, repurposing, and in the vein of more performative mediums - adaptation.  If, as Simon O’Sullivan notes, art is a bundle of affects and it matters how an art object is mobilized, what is in play when art evokes nostalgic affects? What are the affects of projecting forward into and with our pasts?

What if instead of considering choreography solely as a function of creative exploration, we considered its function as fertile ground for identifying creative exploits? This paper explores embodied representations of networks as a training discipline and pedagogical tool to better identify hidden aspects of network protocols to find loopholes, gaps or “exploits” to enact change or facilitate collective agency. In The Exploit: A Theory of Networks, Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker note “The non-human quality of networks is precisely what makes them so difficult to grasp.”  While Mark B.N Hansen suggests, “[…] the digital citizen acquires facility in networked communication by embodying a procedural logic […]”  This research expands on the chance based choreographic procedures of Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and examples in popular films to illustrate possibilities for embodied exploration of network concepts, such as those used in internet coding. Further this paper speculates on the implications of such explorations to dance and computer science pedagogy. It makes a case for dance education as intrinsic to developing technological or systemic literacy, toward the development of the critical skills necessary to enact political change.  This approach of using choreography as a contingent participatory practice links to transferable skills in the technology industry and contributes to an embodied experience of network function – to see structures and possible exploits that aid in propelling art, science and society in alternative directions.

Throughout this term while exploring a self-directed version of Authentic Movement practice, I struggled to find an impulse to move. These sessions would result in fifteen minutes of stillness and mixed feelings of failure and disempowerment. In class however, with the presence of a witness, the opposite was true.  In Andre Lepecki’s ongoing research on stillness in dance, he has come to coin the term “still act” to name the potentiality of stillness as an action in it’s own right. Through practice based research I’m interested in exploring if a sense of empowerment can be found through a practice of active stillness in the presence of others. Is it possible to cultivate an impulse not to move? Can stillness be an act of political agency when performed in public spaces? This research will be comprised of a series of physical explorations of stillness in public places of varying durations over a one-week period with corresponding field notes recorded after each session. This paper will also draw on examples of active stillness in performance including Improv Everywhere’s Frozen Grand Central and Marina Abramović’s work The Artist is Present. These case studies will help illuminate connections between a “still act” and art intervention as well as presence in performance. The culmination of this initial investigation will help guide the framework and design for an upcoming performance series in Barrie ON, The Solidarity Project (working title), which performs the questions, what would it mean to physically stand up for what you believe in?