Dismantling Dance: Rebecca Pappas on Choreography, Power and Resistance

Lily Mellitz ’26

Executive Arts & Entertainment Editor

​On March 6, Rebecca Pappas, associate professor of theater and dance at Trinity College, delivered a lecture titled “We Are Destroying Ourselves//Undoing a Dance” as part of the Faculty Lecture Series. Held in the Dangremond Family Commons, the lecture provided attendees with a deep dive into Pappas’s choreographic research and her exploration of dance as a medium for inquiry, history and transformation.

Pappas, a modern and postmodern choreographer, dancer, teacher and artist, delivered a compelling lecture delving into two of her research projects: “My Body as the Topic Coming Around Again: Vol. 1 // Land, Vol. 2 // (In) Visibility, and Vol. 3 // Caring” and “We Are Destroying Ourselves: a Dance Wrecking.” Modern dance, which emerged in the early 20th century as a reaction against the rigid structures of ballet, emphasizes expressive movement, storytelling and the use of gravity and breath. Postmodern dance, which developed in the 1960s and 1970s, challenges traditional dance forms by incorporating everyday movement, improvisation and minimalism. Pappas’ work reflects both traditions, blending emotional and narrative-driven movement with experimental and abstract elements to explore themes of identity, land, visibility and destruction.

“We Are Destroying Ourselves: a Dance Wrecking” is a project that originally toured briefly in 2020. In this work, guest artists were invited “to publicly dismantle and remake a dance,” Pappas said, challenging conventional notions of authorship and creative ownership. The process, she explained, was inspired by “wrecking,” a method of feedback developed by American choreographer Susan Rethorst in the 1990s. This approach allows for dynamic reimaginings of choreographic material, making dance an evolving dialogue rather than a fixed artifact.

​​Pappas emphasized how the practice of “wrecking” reveals the labor and collaboration behind dance-making, disrupting hierarchical norms and inviting artists to critically examine their own choreographic processes. By allowing invited artists to “wreck” and reconstruct their work, Pappas and her collaborators uncovered new relationships between movement, meaning and power.

“Wrecking allowed us to reimagine choreographic labor, explode individual authorship and interrupt power dynamics on multiple levels,” Pappas explained. “Embedded in the indication to wreck these dances is a hope to work collaboratively to disrupt patterns and legacies of colonization and white supremacy.”

In “My Body as the Topic Coming Around Again,” Pappas weaves together history, geography and personal experience to examine how dance engages with the land. “Vol. 1 // Land” considers the implications of dancing on stolen land and explores how movement can acknowledge and engage with historical erasure.

During the lecture, Pappas reflected on her rehearsals at Trinity College, where she encouraged dancers to treat the studio as a space layered with history rather than a neutral blank slate. She posed questions such as, “Whose bodies are visible and invisible in this space?” and “How does history surface in the way we move?” These inquiries prompted dancers to become aware of their surroundings, the legacies embedded in the land and the possibilities of movement as a tool for reckoning with history.

“Vol. 2 // (In) Visibility” explores the ways bodies are seen, erased, and racialized within dance. Pappas’s research examines whiteness as a structural force in performance, shaping who is perceived as belonging in certain spaces. She discussed how dance can either reinforce historical power imbalances or create opportunities for disruption and transformation. 

Drawing from phenomenology, Pappas considered how bodily presence and absence influence the ways dance is received. She described how choreography can highlight unseen labor, disrupt traditional aesthetic hierarchies and offer new ways of moving together that challenge dominant cultural narratives.

The final volume, “Vol. 3 // Caring,” centers on the role of care in dance-making. Pappas emphasized that dance, at its core, is an act of relationality—requiring trust, attunement and vulnerability. She described how collaborative movement practices cultivate sensitivity and interdependence, fostering both individual and collective transformation.

Pappas also explored the tensions between care and destruction in dance, noting that choreography can be a practice of both resistance and renewal. By engaging in processes that dismantle and reconstruct movement, dancers can create new possibilities for connection and meaning.

Throughout the lecture, Pappas emphasized the role of dance in addressing race, power and embodiment. She underscored the way movement both reflects and challenges societal structures, particularly in relation to whiteness and colonial histories. Her work interrogates how bodies move through space, inherit historical legacies and reframe dominant narratives. She posed thought-provoking questions to the audience, such as: “How do we know what we know about our own bodies? How does history shape movement?” These inquiries, she argued, drive her practice as both a choreographer and researcher.

Pappas also reflected on the importance of softness, sensitivity and collaboration in the creative process. “Moving together becomes the means of researching and learning. Dance practice can heighten perception and provide experiences of the body that are nuanced. It can train us to practice softness and sensitivity to ourselves and one another.” She described how dance offers a means of researching and learning beyond language, allowing artists to engage with complex histories through embodied practice.

The lecture concluded with reflections on the future of “We Are Destroying Ourselves.” In 2023, Pappas and her collaborators revisited the project, once again inviting artists to engage in a process of destruction and reconstruction. This ongoing dialogue between movement, history and creative intervention continues to shape her work, reinforcing dance as a site of both resistance and reinvention.

By bridging scholarship and practice, Pappas’s research challenges traditional hierarchies in dance, encouraging deeper engagement with the ways movement can function as a critical and generative act. Through her research and artistic projects, she invites both dancers and audiences to reconsider the power of the body in shaping and reshaping the world around us.

“Dance can be both a practice of reinscribing our relationships or a practice of release, opening us to new bodily experiences,” Pappas said. “We’ve been trying this year in Theater and Dance to emphasize dance as a form of research and a way of asking questions in the body. So it feels especially correct to be sharing this work with the user.”