Michelle Hayes

University of Kansas, Department of Theatre and Dance, Faculty Member

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Michelle Heffner Hayes, PhD, is a professor of Dance at the University of Kansas. An artist-scholar, she produces original choreography and performance as well as more traditional scholarship. She teaches critical dance studies, improvisation, choreography, pedagogy, and contemporary and flamenco techniques.

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Books by Michelle Hayes

Flamenco on the Global Stage: Historical, Critical, and Theoretical Perspectives

by K. Meira Goldberg and Michelle Hayes

Flamenco on the Global Stage: Historical, Critical, and Theoretical Perspectives, 2015

The language of the body is central to the study of flamenco. From the records of the Inquisition... more The language of the body is central to the study of flamenco. From the records of the Inquisition, to 16th century literature, to European travel diaries, the Spanish dancer beguiles and fascinates. The word flamenco evokes the image of a sensuous and rebellious woman—the bailaora —whose movements seduce the audience, only to reject their attention with a stomp of defiance. The dancer’s body is an agent of ideological resistance, conveying a conflicting desire for subjectivity and autonomy and implying deeply held ideas about history, national identity, femininity and masculinity. This collection of new essays provides an overview of flamenco scholarship, illuminating flamenco’s narrative and chronology and addressing some common misconceptions. The contributors offer fresh perspectives on age-old themes and suggest new paradigms for flamenco as a cultural practice.

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“The Writing on the Wall: Reading Improvisation in Flamenco and Postmodern Dance"

Taken By Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, 2003

In this chapter, Hayes explores the conventions that govern the pratice of improvisation in flame... more In this chapter, Hayes explores the conventions that govern the pratice of improvisation in flamenco and postmodern dance. The ideal body that results from the training in each form has a specific configuration of gendered, sexualized, racialized and class attributes. The way in which movement, meaning and virtuosity are expressed can be compared as similar negotiations of improvisational structures. Hayes characterizes these negotiations as intelligent and intelligible, in order to understand the dancing body as articulate without opposing the body and the intellect and without the opposition of the "natural" to the "artificial."

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Hayes Choreographing Contemporaneity

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"Somos Anti-Guapas: Against Beauty in Contemporary Flamenco"

Flamenco: Conflicting Histories of the Dance, 2009

This chapter focuses on the choreographic analysis and critical reception of performances by thre... more This chapter focuses on the choreographic analysis and critical reception of performances by three Spanish flamenco artists, Belén Maya, Pastora Galván and Rocío Molina. These bailaoras negotiate the constraints of exoticism, “appropriate” femininity, idealized beauty, constructions of race and heteronormativity in flamenco. Rather than threatening the integrity of tradition through their danced interventions, they reveal that flamenco is, by nature of its conventions and counter-tensions, uniquely suited to survival.

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Papers by Michelle Hayes

Laptop Music and Embodiment: Materializing the Ephemeral

Digital Humanities Forum: Return to the Material. University of Kansas. September 14, 2013: http:... more Digital Humanities Forum: Return to the Material. University of Kansas. September 14, 2013: http://idrh.ku.edu/dhforum2013 Michelle Heffner Hayes is at the University of Kansas. Kip Haaheim is at the University of Kansas. Nicole Hodges-Persley is at the University of Kansas. Sherry Tucker is at the University of Kansas.Embodied experiences of music and dance are difficult to describe, let alone preserve for the future. Every listener—those who play or dance and those who don’t—experiences it differently. And when that embodied experience takes place across the digital divide, as diverse bodies differently respond shifting material conditions, perceptual response, and improvisatory navigation—what is the material and how do we share it? In this panel discussion, four KU faculty from the departments of American Studies, Dance, Music, and Theatre, will discuss the material and ephemeral findings of their work on improvisation utilizing a musical instrument download that responds to movement large and small, adapts to all bodies, and calls attention to the user’s experience of their body as they face the screen of a laptop, PC, or IPad. Music and dance are not disconnected in this practice built on body-triggered sound; instead this connection is heightened. In addition, dance need not configure a bodily ideal, but shapes bodies, incorporates all bodies, and constructs connections between people. Panelists will speak at the brink of a forthcoming multi-media performance (KU Commons, October date TBA 2013) that explores lines of performance/research, dis/ability, mobility/stasis, agency/eminence, and sounding/perceiving

When Research Doesn’t Look Like Research: Faculty Development for Creative Artists

Faculty in the creative arts face unique challenges when it comes to the recognition of their pro... more Faculty in the creative arts face unique challenges when it comes to the recognition of their productivity. How do we develop and assess creative works when print publication is the standard measure of accomplishment? This collaborative roundtable offers academic leaders insight about developing and assessing the work of faculty artists

Grafting and Other Ramifications

Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, 2020

Beginning in 2008, American studies professor Sherrie Tucker and dance professor Michelle Heffner... more Beginning in 2008, American studies professor Sherrie Tucker and dance professor Michelle Heffner Hayes developed a series of concurrent course offerings across American Studies and Dance at the University of Kansas. In this collaboratively authored article, Tucker and Hayes reflect on the surprising ramifications of that first grafted class in 2008, and subsequent collaborations, in order to posit a model of improvisational pedagogy of grafting across disciplines that may invigorate research across disciplines in the liberal arts. Tucker and Hayes describe a praxis that motivates teaching and inspires research in a dynamic interactive relationship.

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Flamenco on the Global Stage: Historical, Critical, and Theoretical Perspectives

by K. Meira Goldberg and Michelle Hayes

Flamenco on the Global Stage: Historical, Critical, and Theoretical Perspectives, 2015

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“The Writing on the Wall: Reading Improvisation in Flamenco and Postmodern Dance"

Taken By Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, 2003

Download

Hayes Choreographing Contemporaneity

Download

"Somos Anti-Guapas: Against Beauty in Contemporary Flamenco"

Flamenco: Conflicting Histories of the Dance, 2009