Dance

When we encounter dancing, what are we seeing, experiencing, and understanding?  How do current representations of dance perpetuate and/or disrupt assumptions about personal and social realities? Embedded historical notions and enforcements based on race, economic class, gender, social/sexual orientation, nationality/regional affiliation, and more are threaded through our daily lives. Performing arts, inside and outside of popular culture, often reinforce dominant cultural ideas. Can they also propose or inspire alternatives? In this class, we will view examples of dancing on film, digital/Internet media, television programs and commercials, as well as live performance. These viewings, along with readings of selected texts from the fields of dance and performance, literary criticism, feminist theory, queer theory, and cultural studies will form the basis of class discussions and exercises. Each student will develop an independent research project arising from one or more class activities.  Independent research will include reading, writing, and presentation. The central aim of this course is to cultivate generously informed conversation, using academic research and experiential knowledge to advance our recognition of dance as an elemental art form.

Each student enrolled in a three-credit dance study, five-credit Dance Third, five-credit dance FYS, or Dance MFA program of study is REQUIRED to complete one tech/production job each semester in order to receive full credit for dance courses. In completing Dance Tech/Production, students are exposed to the "behind the scenes" operations required to put on a dance performance. All students do this work, so you may be performing on stage in one concert and working a crew position in the next. The production process is much the same here at Sarah Lawrence as in the professional world. For each concert, the technical crew works during the performances and during the “tech week” before the show. You will receive instruction for every tech job, so don’t worry if you are assigned to do something that you’ve never done before.

Dance Meeting convenes all undergraduate students enrolled in a five-credit Dance Third, a three-credit dance study, or a one-credit dance study—along with all of the MFA in Dance graduate students—in meetings that occur roughly once a month. We gather for a variety of activities that enrich and inform the dance curriculum. In addition to sharing department news and information, Dance Meeting features master classes by guest artists from New York City and beyond; workshops with practitioners in dance-related health fields; panels and presentations by distinguished guests, SLC dance faculty, and alumnae; and casting sessions for departmental performances created by the Live Time-Based Art class.

Improvisation is a potentially limitless resource. Arising from our perceptions of movement itself, responding to environmental elements including sound and music, taking direction from conceptual/imaginary sources, improvisation can yield raw materials for making dances and performance works in multiple disciplines. Improvisation can form the basis for community-building activities. Improvisation reliably supports refinement of our technical skills in dance, from conceptual and choreographic to performative, by giving us greater access to our unique and infinite connections to movement. In this course, we will engage in a variety of approaches to improvisation. We will investigate properties of movement (including speed, force, time, space/range, quality, momentum), using activities that range from highly structured to virtually unstructured. We will work in a variety of environmental settings, from the dance studio to outdoor sites around the campus. Throughout the year, our goals will include building capabilities for sustained exploration of movement instincts and appetites, honing perceptive and communicative skills, and learning to use improvisation to advance movement technique. All of these will support the development of a durable foundation from which to work creatively in any discipline.

How is it possible for us to move in the countless ways that we do? Learn to develop your X-ray vision of human beings in motion through functional anatomical study that combines movement practice, drawing, lecture, and problem solving. In this course, movement is a powerful vehicle for experiencing in detail our profoundly adaptable musculoskeletal anatomy. We will learn Irene Dowd’s Spirals©, a comprehensive warm-up/cool-down for dancing that coordinates all joints and muscles through their fullest range of motion, facilitating study of the entire musculoskeletal system. In addition to movement practice, drawings are made as part of each week’s lecture (drawing materials provided), and three short assignments are submitted each semester. Insights and skills developed in this course can provide tremendous inspiration in the process of movement invention and composition.

This is an opportunity for students who have completed a full year of anatomy study in the SLC dance program to pursue functional anatomy studies in greater depth. In open consultation with the instructor during class meetings, each student engages in independent research, developing one or more lines of inquiry that utilize functional anatomy perspectives and texts as an organizing framework. Research topics in recent years have included aging and longevity in dance, discussion of functional anatomy in relation to linguistics, pedagogy, choreography and performance, investigation of micropolitics in established dance training techniques, examining connections between movement and emotion, development of a unique warm-up sequence to address specific individual technical issues, and study of kinematics and rehabilitation in knee injury. The class meets biweekly to discuss progress, questions, and methods for reporting, writing, and presenting research, alternating with weekly studio/practice sessions for individual and/or group research consultations.

These classes will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher's technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change at either the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

This course will examine the fundamentals of design and how to both think compositionally and work collaboratively as an artist. The medium of light will be used to explore the relationship of art, technology, and movement. Discussion and experimentation will reveal how light defines and shapes an environment. Students will learn a vocabulary to speak about light and to express their artistic ideas. Through hands-on experience, students will practice installing, programming, and operating lighting fixtures and consoles. The artistic and technical skills that they build will then be demonstrated together by creating original lighting designs for the works developed in the Live Time-Based Art course.

These classes will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher's technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change at either the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

These classes will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher's technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change at either the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

This course is an introduction to designing costumes for dance/time-based art. The course will emphasize collaborations with a choreographer and include topics such as: The Creative Process of Design, Where to Begin When Designing for Dance, The Language of Clothes, The Elements of Design, Color Theory, Movement and the Functionality of Dance Costumes, Figure Drawing/Rendering Costumes, and Fabric Dictionary/Fabric Terminology. The course will also cover learning numerous hand and machine stitches, as well as various design-room techniques such as taking measurements, how to fit and alter costumes, and various wardrobe maintenance techniques. Each student in this course will eventually be paired with a student choreographer, with whom he or she will collaborate to realize costumes for the choreographer’s work and which will be presented during the fall or spring departmental dance productions. Throughout the year, students will also create, in a loose-leaf binder, their own Resource Book, which will comprise all handouts, in-class exercises, and notes. The Resource Book will be a useful reference tool as students work on various class assignments and/or departmental productions. This course is designed to give students a basic knowledge of the many intricate creative and technical steps involved in the design process when creating costumes. A deeper understanding of the various aspects of costume design for dance is an enormous tool that can not only enhance one’s overall design skills but also allow the student to communicate more fully during the creative process—whether with fellow designers or as a choreographer or director collaborating with a production team. The Resource Book will also serve as a helpful guide in the future, as the student embarks on his or her own productions at Sarah Lawrence and beyond.

These classes will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher's technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change at either the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

This course is an experimental laboratory that aims to expose students to a diverse set of current voices and approaches to contemporary dance making. Each guest artist will lead a module of three-to-seven class sessions. These mini-workshops will introduce students to that artist and his/her creative process. Guests will present both emergent and established voices and a wide range of approaches to contemporary artistic practice.

In this class, graduate and upperclass undergraduate students with a special interest and experience in the creation of time-based artworks that include live performance will design and direct individual projects. Students and faculty will meet weekly to view works-in-progress and discuss relevant artistic and practical problems, both in class on Tuesday evenings and in conferences taking place on Thursday afternoons. Attributes of the work across multiple disciplines of artistic endeavor will be discussed as integral and interdependent elements in the work. Participation in mentored, critical-response feedback sessions with your peers is a key aspect of the course. The engagement with the medium of time in live performance, the constraints of presentation of the works both in works-in-progress and in a shared program of events, and the need to respect the classroom and presentation space of the dance studio will be the constraints imposed on the students’ artistic proposals. Students working within any number of live-performance traditions are as welcome in this course as those seeking to transgress orthodox conventions. While all of the works will engage in some way with embodied action, student proposals need not fall neatly into a traditional notion of what constitutes dance. The cultivation of open discourse across traditional disciplinary artistic boundaries, both in the process of developing the works and in the context of presentation to the public, is a central goal of the course. The faculty members leading this course have roots in dance practice but also have practiced expansive definitions of dance within their own creative work. The course will culminate in performances of the works toward the end of the semester in a shared program with all enrolled students and within the context of winter and spring time-based art events. Performances of the works will take place in the Bessie Schönberg Dance Theatre or elsewhere on campus in the case of site-specific work.

When we encounter dancing, what are we seeing, experiencing, and understanding? How do current representations of dance perpetuate and/or disrupt assumptions about personal and social realities? Embedded historical notions and enforcements based on race, economic class, gender, social/sexual orientation, nationality/regional affiliation, and more are threaded through our daily lives. Performing arts inside and outside of popular culture often reinforce dominant cultural ideas. Can they also propose or inspire alternatives? In this class, we will view examples of dancing on film, digital/Internet media, television programs and commercials, as well as live performance. These viewings, along with readings of selected texts from the fields of dance and performance, literary criticism, feminist theory, queer theory, and cultural studies will form the basis of class discussions and exercises. Each student will develop an independent research project arising from one or more class activities.  Independent research will include reading, writing, and presentation. The central aim of this course is to cultivate generously informed conversation, using academic research and experiential knowledge to advance our recognition of dance as an elemental art form.

Performance Project is a component in which a visiting artist or company is invited to create a work with students or to set an existing piece of choreography. The works are performed for the College community at the end of the semester.

Inspired by the work of Katherine Dunham, you will be invited to explore her movement vocabulary, often used in jazz dance, and then find the interconnections between Dunham’s contributions to film and concert stage with the current techniques used in commercial and concert dance, as well as learn vernacular Jazz movement. Open to all levels, this high-energy class inspires fun and freedom of expression through artistry, improvisation, and embellishment of choreography—regardless of skill and dance experience, yet challenging enough for more experienced dancers.  For each meeting, a classic Dunham warm-up will be given, followed by lively, Dunham-inspired jazz progressions and a combo. Join us for a transformative exploration of jazz dance, honoring tradition while embracing innovation!

This beginning-level dance class is designed to introduce students to Hawaiian hula dance through percussion, song, and dance. The hula class structure is designed to give student a hands-on journey into the heart of the hula. At the same time, in the classroom, students will explore the broader issues of culture and its artistic expressions. This multidisciplinary approach incorporates social studies, language arts, dance, visual arts, and music. The instructor and the students work collaboratively in class, bringing together their various skills and expertise. Students will focus on the arts and traditions of a cultural group, building a contextual frame for the study of the hula, its origins and meanings. In the course of the class, many basic skills are put to use—oral and written language, coordination, listening, observation, description, analysis, and evaluation. This blend of artistic and academic learning provides students with an in-depth artistic experience while also exploring the larger themes of cultures and their artistic expressions.

In this course, we will examine and hone the tools needed for propelling your creative work into the professional landscape. Taught from the perspective of an active artist/arts professional in the nonprofit sector, the course will attempt to achieve fluency for all makers by providing practical encounters with key areas of budgeting and finance, fundraising and grant writing, presenting and touring, and self-producing components (including marketing, press, audience-development and engagement strategies, digital and social interactions, and production administration). We will explore various dance and theatre financial models, from being an independent solo artist to starting your own ensemble. The class will be participatory, asking each student to craft project descriptions, grant narratives, and budgets for their thesis projects or other works shown in the previous semester or first year. We will develop and stage mock applications and peer/panel reviews for real-world funding opportunities, undertake group budgeting for productions that occur in each department, and develop concurrent fundraising plans and crowdsourcing campaigns. The aim of this course is to provide a greater level of competitive preparedness for graduating dance and performance makers on the cusp of representing themselves and their work in their chosen field(s).

This course introduces students to singular choreographic possibilities offered by cinematographic tools, promoting new ways to engage with dance through new media and its platforms. The course focuses on “why and how” to convey a choreographic idea into a filmic practice, how the encounter between moving images and moving bodies can expand the development of a choreographic language beyond live performance. The course dwells on fundamental questions: How are we positioning our work in relation to these two fields—historically, aesthetically, and conceptually? Is there a broad and thorough blending of concepts, philosophy, processes, and tools? Moving Bodies in Frame is a mix of analytical and production classes, introducing students to the history of video/experimental film/choreocinema; moving to contemporary videos and installations,; and, finally, addressing the opportunities offered by the new platforms available at this moment in time. Students will have a series of hands-on exercises and assignments, individually and/or in groups, suggested every week. These exercises explore concepts of framing, camera movement, planes, deconstruction of space and time, the relationship of audio X image, special effects, postproduction, installation, etc. Students will create a final assignment, a project where they define a concept, shoot the video, and address postproduction decisions like sound and editing. Finally, we will discuss how the project should be presented and experienced: Is it an intimate or communal experience? Does it ask for projection or monitor, small or big screen, one or multiple screens, viewer mobility, and interactiveness? The course welcomes choreographers, performers, filmmakers, photographers, cinematographers, media artists, or anyone interested in this process. A camera will not be necessary; all assignments can be done with participants’ phones.

This conditioning uses embodied anatomy, Pilates-based strengthening, body weight exercises, information about cardiovascular fitness, and artistic reflection to build healthy groundwork from which to build a sustained physical dance practice. Each week, we will address a different area of the body with an anatomical lecture, definition and palpation of bony landmarks and activation of specific support structures, and targeted exercises to help build deeper understanding and support. This more intellectual investigation will be applied directly to movement to help develop technical training, as well as to encourage injury prevention and rehabilitation. Students will be expected to show critical-thinking skills around the concepts presented in class. They are expected to be present, attempt exercises, and develop personal modifications when necessary and to show some physical progress throughout the semester. Discussion in class is encouraged, as this is a time to display internal process. It is suggested, though not required, for students to maintain a journal throughout the semester.

When we write about dance, movement arts, and performance practice, how can we address and unpack the politics and power dynamics inherently at play in authorship, spectatorship, participatory experience, and research? How might our individual intersectional subjectivities be avenues into engaging the act of meaning-making while witnessing, conversing with, and archiving dance and performance? In this seminar, we will study various historical and current relationships of writing to movement-based performance practice, tracing the legacy of dance criticism and its subsequent evolution as a point of departure. We will look at a myriad of forms of dance writing that exemplify different potentials for relationship between performer and audience member or witness, including but not be limited to: dance criticism, embedded criticism, autotheory, writing on advocacy and ethics within the dance field, transcribed interviews and conversations with dance and movement artists, and artists’ “process notes.” We will also look at texts that are not directly situated within dance studies but that emerge from various feminist and queer lineages in which theory, research, and critique have become modes that evoke a deepening of relationship between subjectivity, environment, and art-making. In addition to reading and discussing various forms of dance writing, students will develop their own writing practice in conversation with filmed footage of dance performances and rehearsals and live dance performances and rehearsals.

Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.

Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.

This class focuses on the personal and creative process in building an approach to dance pedagogy, as well as naming the skills involved to facilitate and support  dance/body/movement-based classrooms. We will work together to BUILD A CURIOSITY that will appear in the form of your pedagogical approach to teaching dance. To assemble this, we will be inquiring deeply into ourselves, our histories, patterns, cultures, desires, inhibitions, and much more. We will draw as much as we can from ourselves to look at, discuss, and dream up approaches to dance pedagogy that inspire us and keep us activated.

Students will be introduced to the traditional Chinese practices of Tai Chi and Qi Gong. These practices engage with slow, deliberate movements, focusing on the breath, meditative practice, and posture to restore and balance energy—called chi or Qi. The postures flow together, creating graceful dances of continuous motion. Sometimes referred to as one of the soft or internal martial arts, Tai Chi and Qi Gong are foundational practices within a lifelong, holistic self-cultivation in traditional Chinese culture.

This studio practice course introduces students to hip-hop culture through the classic hip-hop styles of dance. Cumulative technical dance training brings to light the ethos of the street-dance culture and how it counteracts and sometimes adopts mainstream media misconceptions. Through the study of classic hip-hop dance styles, students expand their awareness of connections between various dance forms that pre-date hip-hop while exploring the dilemma of belonging, yet standing apart. Through dialogue, students will begin learning about the history of the original dance styles in their communities and then discuss mainstream factors that either helped or harmed the evolution of the community. Occasional guest teachers will offer a class in a club or street style that will help students get a feel for the New York City dance scene of the 1980s, which influenced today’s trends. Students will watch Internet footage to aid them in understanding the similarities and differences between previous trends and today’s social exchanges in dance. Students will receive dance training at a beginner level done to hip-hop music from past to present. If there are intermediate-level dancers, they will be taught at respective levels in order to make advancements in their grasp of vocabulary.

This course is an introduction to butoh through the lens of LEIMAY’s Ludus practice, which is the embodied research being taught today by LEIMAY Artistic Director Ximena Garnica. Butoh is a Japanese performing-art form that was created by Tatsumi Hijikata in the 1950s and 1960s. The course will start with an introduction to Hijikata’s butoh-fu, a choreographic method that physicalizes imagery through words. The course will then expand into LEIMAY’s Ludus practice, using multiple physical explorations to embody imagery and enlarge states of consciousness, enabling multiple realms of perception while challenging Eurocentric notions of body, space, and time. Each dancer’s physical potential will be cultivated to develop a unique movement language that is rooted in butoh's ideas of transformation. Simultaneously, we will focus on the conditioning of a conductive body through the identification of the body’s own weight in relation to gravity, along with the cultivation of internal rhythm and fluidity. Together, we will decentralize self-centered 34 Dance approaches to movement and explore the possibilities of “being danced by” instead of “I dance,” “becoming spacebody” rather than occupying space. We will challenge our body’s materiality and enliven our sensorium through listening to the rhythms and textures of the nonhuman. And we will use impossibility as a spark to enrich the ways in which we create and inhabit the world. This course is based on principles developed through Garnica’s nearly two decades of study of butoh. Historical and cultural context will be offered throughout the course. This class is open to dance, theatre, and any other students who are curious and interested in discovering alternative approaches to body and movement practices.

Students in this course will develop skills to bring their artistry into a teaching setting, combining practical and theoretical studies. We will work systematically and imaginatively to develop teaching practices in dance and movement forms that move us most deeply, addressing individual and collective concerns throughout the process. We will explore strategies for teaching a variety of techniques, from codified dance forms to generative forms, including improvisation and composition. Over the course of the semester, with all members of the class serving as both teacher and student, each participant will develop a cohesive plan for teaching in professional settings. Studio practices including movement, observation, discussion; class exercises will support in-depth exploration of teaching and learning as intrinsically related aspects of education at its best. In addition to work in the studio, independent research will entail surveying literature in the field of dance education and training, as well as potential sources beyond the field, according to individual interests. Practical and theoretical research will form the basis of a final presentation (teaching one or more sections of the curricular plan) and a final written report with annotated bibliography, summarizing and documenting the development process as well as providing a basis for future promotional material. 

The Alexander Technique is a system of neuromuscular re-education that enables the student to identify and change poor and inefficient habits that may be causing stress and fatigue. With gentle, hands-on guidance and verbal instruction, the student learns to replace faulty habits with improved coordination by locating and releasing undue muscular tensions. This includes easing of the breath, introducing greater freedom and optimizing performance in all activities. It is a technique that has proven to be profoundly useful for dancers, musicians, and actors and has been widely acclaimed by leading figures in the performing arts, education, and medicine.

This course is both an introduction to various skills involved in working with tactile partnership in dance and a creative laboratory to explore the expressive potential of touch. Contact Improvisation (CI) dates back to the early 1970s, but this is not a course in CI, per se. We will explore many exercises and principles drawn from CI work, as well as principles that CI has drawn from movement forms as diverse as aikido and ballroom dancing. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we already work in partnership whether dancing or walking down the street. The force of gravity is always pulling our weight toward the Earth, and the ground (or the floor) is pushing back. We’ve become so good at standing on our own two feet that we may no longer realize that we are constantly navigating this interrelationship. As we move out of balance, which is part of all dancing, we need to build skills on how to fall. As such, we’ll start this semester with a focus on floor work, challenging ourselves to move safely on and off the floor with increasing speed and force. As we build skills, we’ll gradually adapt these principles to our work in contact with our peers. While we’ll begin with a very light touch, we’ll gradually build into mutual support structures and, possibly, try out a few lifts. This adds to the complexity of navigating forces that originate from our partner. As this work progresses, the integrity of our support structure will become more and more critical. The structure of the class will alternate between skill building/practice and creative exploration with these skills. We will also learn some existing partnered sequences from my own choreography to serve as a kind of springboard to our own creative investigations. A foundation of working in physical partnership with others is navigating consent. We will begin our work together by exploring recent discourse on touch, consent, and boundaries in the fields of dance and performance. Each student will be empowered to understand and articulate his/her own boundaries, which may be constantly in flux. We will engage this as both a right and a responsibility for each of us to exercise individually so that we can build a functional, honest, and empowering community for our work together. The core work in this class is about exploring physiological touch and sharing weight with the floor and your peers, as described above. If doing so in each class session with a variety of partners throughout the semester is not of interest or does not feel safe/supportive at this time, this course might not be a good fit for you this semester. If you are somewhat unsure but want to explore touch and potentially expand your comfort zone with partner work in dance, please reach out during registration (Aug. 19-21, 2024), and we can have a conversation (jjasperse@sarahlawrence.edu). 

Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.

Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.

All dance is political, simply because it is created by a human being who is of a particular place and time. Thus, the work is inherently commenting on that particular place and time. Using this framework, we will take a deep dive into American dance history from Reconstruction to today, with an eye on tackling the questions: 1) How did this thing we refer to as “American dance” come to be? 2) Who or what is missing from the canon? Why? 3) How do we place ourselves inside of this lineage? With a keen understanding of the state of the world at the point of creation, students will develop a critical eye through which to view performance—the how and the why of creation having equal footing with the physical forms. Further, students will begin to develop an understanding of how contemporary American dance is in constant conversation with dance of the past.

This course will use physical embodiment as a mode of learning about and understanding various West African cultures. In addition to physical practice, supplementary study materials will be used to explore the breadth, diversity, history, and technique of dances found in West Africa. Traditional and social/contemporary dances from countries such as Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast will be explored. Participation in end-of-semester or year-end showings will provide students with the opportunity to apply studies in a performative context.

Film has become one of the most dominant forms of visual media and creative expression. In this seminar/workshop for the budding director, we will first focus on the filmmaking fundamentals that every filmmaker needs to know in order to tell an effective story on screen: basic filmmaking terms, crew positions, camera operation, shot angles and composition, camera movement, basic lighting, sound recording, and editing. Students will also learn to how to create shot lists, floor plans, and other important tools necessary for a successful shoot. Initially, solo shooting assignments will be given, allowing students to begin to develop their own cinematic voice. Because collaboration is key in filmmaking, students will also be divided into small groups for several weekly assignments, giving them the opportunity to serve in various roles on the crew. The idea is for students to acquire the skills needed for creating compelling cinematic work on their own and with others.

Film has become one of the most dominant forms of visual media and creative expression. In this seminar/workshop for the budding director, we will first focus on the filmmaking fundamentals that every filmmaker needs to know in order to tell an effective story on screen: basic filmmaking terms, crew positions, camera operation, shot angles and composition, camera movement, basic lighting, sound recording, and editing. Students will also learn to how to create shot lists, floor plans, and other important tools necessary for a successful shoot. Initially, solo shooting assignments will be given, allowing students to begin to develop their own cinematic voice. Because collaboration is key in filmmaking, students will also be divided into small groups for several weekly assignments, giving them the opportunity to serve in various roles on the crew. The idea is for students to acquire the skills needed for creating compelling cinematic work both on their own and with others.

Athens, London, Paris, Berlin, New York...the history of Western theatre has always been associated with cities, their politics, their customs, their geography, their audiences. This course will track the story of theatre as it originates in the Athens of the fifth-century BCE and evolves into its different expressions and practices in cities of later periods, all of them seen as “capitals” of civilization. Does theatre civilize, or is it merely a reflection of any given civilization whose cultural assumptions inform its values and shape its styles? Given that ancient Greek democracy gave birth to tragedy and comedy in civic praise of the god Dionysos—from a special coupling of the worldly and the sacred—what happens when these genres recrudesce in the unsavory precincts of Elizabethan London, the polished court of Louis XIV, the beer halls of Weimar Berlin, and the neon “palaces” of Broadway? Sometimes the genres themselves are challenged by experiments in new forms or by performances deliberately situated in unaccustomed places. By tinkering with what audiences have come to expect or where they have come to assemble, do playwrights like Euripides, Brecht, and Sarah Kane destabilize civilized norms? Grounding our work in Greek theatre, we will address such questions in a series of chronological investigations of the theatre produced in each city: Athens and London in the first semester; Paris, Berlin, and New York in the second.

Experiment and explore contemporary performance art. Through surveying a range of important artworks and movements, we will review the histories, concepts, and practices of performance art. Born from anti-art, performance art challenges the boundaries of artistic expression through implementing, as material, the concepts of space, time, and the body. Examples of artists that we will review are John Cage, Joan Jonas, Adrian Piper, Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler, Simone Forti, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Pope.L, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Janine Antoni, Suzanne Lacy, Aki Sasamoto, and Anna Halprin, to name a few. We will review dialogues and movements introducing performance art, such as art interventions, sculpture, installation art, institutional critique, protest art, social media, video art, happenings, dada, comedy, sound art, graphic notation, scores, collaboration, and dance/movement. Students will be able to relate the form and function of performance art through research, workshopping ideas, experimentation, and improvisation—thereby developing the ability to confidently implement any method of the performance art genre.

Since the early 20th century, artists have explored performance art as a radical means of expression. In both form and function, performance pushes the boundaries of contemporary art. Artists use the medium for institutional critique, for social activism, and to address the personal politics of gender, sexuality, and race. This course approaches performance art as a porous, transdisciplinary medium open to students from all disciplines, including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture, video, filmmaking, theatre, dance, music, creative writing, and digital art. Students learn about the legacy of performance art from the 1970s to the present and explore some of the concepts and aesthetic strategies used to create works of performance. Through texts, artists’ writings, video screenings, and slide lectures, students are introduced to a range of performance-based artists and art movements.