CHOREOGRAPHY
MFA Thesis Research.
This page contains documentation created as part of my Candidacy for my MFA in Modern Dance and Graduate Screendance Certificate at the University of Utah. My research centers on exploring the role of the body in understanding the self through interdisciplinary, collaborative choreographic and pedagogical practices.
Below, you will find my Choreographic Thesis, which premiered in October 2025, entitled where we were | have been | will be, my Literature Review, and my Thesis Proposal Presentation.
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where we were| have been | will be
An interdisciplinary work directed by Soph Cardinal (they/them) in collaboration with their performers Grace Hurley, Terra Killpack-Knutsen, Salanieta Malohifo’ou, Keily Tafiti, and Em Zinn. This work serves as a culmination of their choreographic, scholarly, and performative research. Shifting boundaries between movement, film, sound score, and visual art, this piece invites the audience to reconcile their relationships to transformation, grief, and discomfort, to sit in the spaces in-between.
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Thesis Proposal Presentation
This presentation served as my proposal for the MFA Thesis Research, which was approved by my Committee Members to progress into official candidacy.
This proposal combines my preliminary literature review with findings from my movement generation process to evaluate the role of the body in understanding the self. Slides were created by Aspen Tracey.
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Literature Review
This preliminary literature review engages the embodied philosophies of Gloria Anzaldúa, Judith Butler, and Omi Salas-SantaCruz to examine how centering the body in physical, emotional, and cultural contexts can deepen our understanding of selfhood and identity. Drawing on Anzaldúa’s notion of nepantla as a space of liminal transformation, Butler’s theory of gender performativity, and SantaCruz's articulation of decolonial trans* epistemologies, I explore how dance, particularly through trans and gender nonconforming experiences, becomes a site for interrogating and reimagining identity. This work situates dance-making as a critical praxis within decolonial pedagogy, foregrounding the body as a source of knowledge.