Nelesi Gabriela Rodrigues

This dissertation invites performance and dance sensibilities into writing studies and vice versa. It argues that movement––political, embodied, and geographical––expands our understanding of the work, the contexts, and the stakes of composition, as it infuses the field with stronger sense of intentionality, agility, and accountability. Using bibliographic, archival, and ethnographic research methods, it examines three instances of composition as movement: Black Feminists’ composition pedagogies at CUNY (1965-1979), Ananya Dance Theater’s work, and the diasporic permutations of the Venezuelan feminist cycling collective Bicimamis. The synergy between writing and movement in these collectives animates composition as movement in the physical, emotional, and political senses of that word.