Global Arc

What can memoirs teach us about navigating the demands of a life in dance, and about the ways these demands are profoundly intersectional: shaped by racial, gender, and class hierarchies and economies? This seminar examines memoir as an activist project and mode of performance illuminating the work of dance. Readings include works by Carlos Acosta, Misty Copeland, Li Cunxin, Mark Morris, Jock Soto, and others. Theories of personal narrative theory and autobiography guide our discussions. Students will conduct oral history interviews and investigate personal papers in local archives as forms of memoir. Emphasis on dancers in the Americas.

This course will expose students to the most recent developments in dance studies. While engaging with a variety of dance forms from different cultures, students will explore analytical strategies and familiarize themselves with the methodologies used by dance scholars in their interpretations of bodies in motion. They will examine how social theories inform the understanding of dance and, vice versa, how the analysis of dance contributes to the development of social theories. Topics to be covered include: dance as a product of culture, as a social form of expression, as cultural identity, and as political power.

This hybrid studio/seminar course progresses in two tracks: one of embodied movement practices and the other of theoretico-historical critique. The canon of modern dance--arguably an American trajectory--is the source material for our interdisciplinary work. We will mimic and examine landmark choreographies in order to explore foundational tenets of modern art and modernity at large. Ableism and nihilism, sovereignty and sexuality, race and gender, are some of the themes that we will face along the path of analyzing the work of Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, Bob Fosse, Merce Cunningham, George Balanchine, and Vaclav Nijinsky.

The interdisciplinary field of performance studies offers generative strategies for theorizing social life. This course explores the ways performance as a critical theoretical tool and as a practice enables students to examine everyday self-presentation, political economy, gender, race, and sexuality, material culture, ethics, and other social practices. Theoretical genealogies in anthropological and poststructuralism included. Because performance studies posits theory as doing, in-class performance exercises, and theorizing and constructing performance-based activism, are part of the course. No formal dance or theatre experience necessary.

Coined by the poet and essayist Audre Lorde, the term "biomythography" combines history, biography, and myth-making. Using an interdisciplinary workshop approach to explore the concept of the biomyth, this course will provide an introduction to various sites of contemporary art practices situating literature, design, and dance within a social and historical context. Zami will serve as a point of departure into the creation of our memoir narratives. Additional texts will include live and recorded performances, historical, theoretical secondary sources, as well as guest writers, poets and artists.

This studio course culminates in student-created performances in the Roberts Theater at the end of the term. Students from across fields who are interested in slowing down the art-making process to explore the nature of devising, developing, revising, and performing are invited to join. We'll delve into the often-intermingled roles of creator, performer, designer, technician, and audience member. We'll use embodied tools to generate material and hone collaborative processes. We'll question why and how and in what contexts we make work. We'll look at forms like the lecture-performance, the happening, concert dance, and one-person shows.

In this class we study the relationships between performance-making, philanthropy and ethics. How are performing artists financing their work, and what does this mean in relationship to economic and social justice? How did we arrive to the current conditions of arts funding? What is the connection between wealth and giving and when are those ties inherently questionable? What is at stake in the debate of public versus private support? Does funding follow artists' concerns or delimit them?

This class will focus on expanding dancers' movement choices through experiential anatomy. Using both movement laboratories and lectures, the class will conduct an in-depth analysis of dance and movement from many angles including: research in cognitive studies, neuroscience, multiple somatics modalities, and functional anatomy. We will focus on seeking physical knowledge to generate new movement languages and acquire efficient movement patterns within our bodies, our minds, and ourselves. One two-hour lecture, one two-hour movement lab, and one two-hour seminar.

We all need more care. That much is clear. As it pertains to artmaking, the imperative to incorporate systems of care and healing into the greater conversation within the frameworks of modern performance making has increased dynamically since 2020. It has become even more vital for contemporary artists to consider holistic care models as an utmost concern while creating work in the age of global crisis. But how do we practice care within performance? This seminar examines how contemporary artists and creative researchers consider dramaturgy as a radical act of care within contemporary performance practice.

This advanced studio course compares training, practice, and performance methods of diverse approaches to the body, community, and kinaesthetic values in contemporary dance. Classes will draw upon analytic, reflexive, and creative processes. Selected readings and viewing assignments provide historical and theoretical support to examine how dance and movement training fuels individual development, choreographic process, and aesthetic research.