Ohio: A State of Dance (2021)
Broadcast Documentary

Statewide documentary tracing Ohio’s diverse dance ecosystems, companies, and historical legacies.

Premiere screening, OhioDance Festival 2021

Statewide PBS broadcast, 3 year contract run: WPTD, WOSU, WCET, WVIZ

Nominated for an Ohio Valley Regional Emmy Award in Arts & Entertainment Content

Ohio: A State of Dance is based on The OhioDance Virtual Dance Collection’s first ten selected dance developments that anchor the collection. Created by women, the documentary springs from an analytical perspective on the social and political climate of the times it features, highlighting the ways that historical tides have influenced artistic expression, observing how Ohio’s dance has intersected with the women’s movement, civil rights, and disability rights, among other trends. Sourcing from the significant breadth of work generated, the film manifests visual representations of the power dynamics within the historical account. A strong narrative of women’s leadership emerges, exposing a recursive and organic trajectory through which women in the dance field have built influence and purpose on their own terms, in concert with the grassroots support of other stakeholders. Through oral history interviews, dance footage, archival materials and photos, a rhizomatic pattern of growth emerges among the contributions of Ohio’s important dance figures from the twentieth century to the present, offering context for how and why these individuals rose to historical significance as leaders and pioneers in a unique local, national and international cultural landscape.

We dedicate this film to the memory of Lucy Dent Venable.

Practice as Research

Ohio: A State of Dance (2021) is a broadcast documentary that investigates how documentary form can function as movement-adjacent public scholarship, translating embodied dance knowledge into accessible, historically grounded media for broad audiences. The core research inquiry asks: How can documentary storytelling operate as a scholarly method for preserving, interpreting, and disseminating dance history in ways that honor embodiment, community context, and cultural lineage?

The project approaches documentary not as a neutral record, but as an interpretive research practice. Dance history is constructed through narrative framing, editorial structure, and the synthesis of voices, materials, and temporal rhythms. Rather than prioritizing performance capture alone, the documentary foregrounds oral history, archival context, and reflective narration, positioning movement as culturally situated knowledge that extends beyond the stage.

The film was developed from an extensive archive of approximately 28–35 hours of oral history interviews conducted as part of the initial phase of the Virtual Dance Collection®. Drawing from this source material, oral historian M. Candace Feck, Ph.D. authored a documentary script that shaped the narrative arc of the film. I served as editor and primary media producer, assembling, structuring, and refining the documentary from this substantial research corpus. Early editorial shaping was developed collaboratively with the executive producer and production team through an intensive review process, after which I assumed primary responsibility for executing the full edit, integrating animation, graphics, narration, and final delivery. Editorial decisions—including selection, juxtaposition, pacing, and synthesis—functioned as analytical tools through which historical meaning was constructed and communicated.

In addition to editorial authorship, I expanded the documentary’s research methodology by integrating screendance as a form of historical interpretation. Supported by funding from the Ohio State University Department of Dance’s Dance Preservation Fund, I conceived and implemented a motion-capture–based screendance component in which choreographic phrases representing ten featured artists and institutions were choreographed, performed, animated, and embedded within the film. These animated movement sequences function not as illustration, but as embodied historiographic devices—translating choreographic lineage and aesthetic principles into mediated form within the documentary structure.

The outcomes of the project demonstrate documentary’s capacity to function as scholarly dissemination. Ohio: A State of Dance was broadcast statewide through PBS-affiliated stations under multi-year contracts and received an Ohio Valley Regional Emmy nomination for Arts & Entertainment Content, signaling peer recognition within professional broadcast contexts. The film also received additional professional recognition through the Telly Awards for educational, historical, and nonprofit television content. Beyond broadcast, the documentary has been used in educational and public programming as a resource for teaching dance history, cultural context, and media literacy.

This research contributes to dance and media education by modeling documentary as a rigorous, ethical, and scalable research methodology. It demonstrates how movement-based knowledge can be preserved and interpreted through narrative media without reducing dance to visual artifact alone. By embedding screendance and editorial authorship within documentary practice, the project expands how dance research can circulate publicly while maintaining methodological integrity.

Methods

This documentary research employs a practice-based methodology integrating historical inquiry, oral history, screendance, and narrative media production to translate embodied dance knowledge into accessible public scholarship.

Oral History as Primary Research Source
First-person interviews with artists, educators, and cultural leaders function as foundational research material, capturing embodied memory and experiential knowledge often absent from institutional archives.

Archival Research and Editorial Curation
Historical photographs, performance documentation, and archival records were researched, selected, and contextualized within a narrative framework. Archival materials function as analytical evidence rather than illustration, supporting historiographic interpretation.

Narrative Structure as Analytical Method
Editorial sequencing, pacing, and thematic organization were treated as analytical tools. Narrative construction synthesized multiple voices and historical moments, shaping how movement history is interpreted by clarifying relationships, continuities, and cultural contexts.

Screendance as Historical Interpretation
Motion-capture–based screendance sequences were conceived, choreographed, performed, and animated as embodied research outputs. These sequences translate choreographic lineage into mediated form, embedding movement-based analysis directly within the documentary structure.

Public Broadcast as Scholarly Dissemination
The documentary was developed for public television distribution, with broadcast standards and audience accessibility integrated into the research design. Broadcast circulation functioned as a mode of scholarly dissemination and public engagement.

External Review and Recognition
Professional broadcast review processes, including regional Emmy nomination, served as external evaluative contexts contributing feedback and validation within the research cycle.

Production Team Ohio: A State of Dance trt 26:24

Oral Historian & Writer
M. Candace Feck, Ph.D.

Executive Producer,
Jane D’Angelo

Editor, Media Producer, Archival Integration, Screendance Choreography & Motion Capture Performance
Jessica Cavender

Narrator
Rodney Veal

Videography
Megan Davis-Bushway

Animation
Taylor Olsen

Audio Mixing
Pat Ward

Motion Capture Specialist
Vita Berezina-Blackburn

Additional Documentary Research Context

My documentary research extends beyond Ohio: A State of Dance into a broader body of broadcast and public-facing work that applies similar methodologies of oral history, archival research, and narrative construction across varied subject matter. This includes multiple dance-centered documentaries, one of which received an Ohio Valley Regional Emmy nomination for audio design, reflecting research attention to sound as a carrier of embodied and cultural meaning.

I have also applied these methods to historically grounded, non-dance subjects, most notably Ohioans in Space, a broadcast documentary narrated by astronaut Dr. Kathryn Sullivan and also nominated for an Ohio Valley Regional Emmy. While differing in content, these projects share a consistent research approach: translating complex, embodied, and historically situated knowledge into accessible public media through rigorous editorial, sonic, and narrative strategies. Together, this body of work demonstrates documentary as an adaptable and sustained mode of scholarly and creative inquiry.