Global Arc

This course provides laboratories and cross-genre dance technique to facilitate a somatic understanding of kinesiology. Students identify limitations and expand individual expression. Technique class will integrate ballet and modern techniques while emphasizing values of exploration and risk-taking. Movement labs will integrate research in functional anatomy/kinesiology and diverse systems of somatic education to understand both the potential of neuro-motor development and physiological systems. Classes will provide freedom of exploration in all genres of dance and give students knowledge to strengthen physicality and movement repertoire.

This course uses texts and methods from history, theatre, performance studies, and dance to examine artists and works of art as agents of change in New York (1960-present) and contemporary Detroit. Issues addressed include relationships between artists, changing urban economies, and the built environment; the role of the artist in gentrification and creative placemaking; the importance of local history in art interventions; and assessing impacts of arts initiatives. Spring break trip to Detroit, and visits to key sites in New York and Philadelphia, are included. Students will use data and methods from the course to produce final projects.

Performance and crisis have always been partners: entangled in epidemics, state violence and resistance, and austerity regimes, as well as the crisis ordinariness of settler colonialism and structural racism. This seminar examines performance in our extraordinary present using autoethnography, ethnography, and interviews. Course readings and viewings offer historical and contemporary case studies. Guests will discuss the paired challenges of antiracism and the COVID-19 pandemic for performance organizations. Students will collaborate on analyses of dance and performance organizations' responses to COVID-19 and anti-racist imperatives.

A studio course in modern dance technique for intermediate/advanced students. This course will consist of four units focusing on prominent movement innovators of the 20th century: Katherine Dunham, Martha Graham, Lester Horton, José Limón, taught by experts in their respective dance techniques. The relevance and impact of these techniques will be underscored by examining and practicing Contemporary Dance to understand the influence of these pioneering movement systems on 21st century dancing artists. Readings and viewings of performances will further enhance students' knowledge of the major trends in 20th century Modern Dance.

Dance in Education: Dance/Theater Pedagogy explores the connection between engaged dance and elementary school literacy, mathematics and social studies, while allowing students to be civically engaged. Students will teach movement classes to elementary school students and will explore dance and theater in elementary education with an emphasis on recent developments in the field. Fieldwork takes place weekly at designated out-of-class times at schools and institutions for young people in the Princeton region. Classroom management skills, lesson planning strategies and various methods of evaluation/assessment will be examined.

This seminar is designed for junior dance certificate students to investigate current dance practices and ideas. Part study and discussion of the processes, aesthetics and politics involved in dance making and viewing -- part independent creative practice and critique -- this course invites students to a deeper understanding of their own art making perspectives and to those of their classmates. Guest artists will visit classes and share some of the directorial, collaborative and interpersonal challenges involved in leading a significant creative enterprise. Serious creators (non-juniors/certificates) may apply to enroll.

Princeton Dance Festival performance course for the creation of a new rhythm tap dance piece by 2021-2023 Princeton Arts Fellow Michael J. Love. The course focuses on developing technical expertise, expressive range, and stylistic clarity. Students will examine various concepts - such as skeletal support, sequential movement, rhythm, and momentum to emphasize efficiency in motion - and perform an original work that represents a contemporary approach to dancemaking. The course encourages rich, subtle, and stylistically accurate renditions of choreography and engages students in collaborative learning.

This course focuses on the history, criticism, and aesthetics of dance as a theatrical art form and/or a social practice. Topics might include an examination of dance through personal, aesthetic, religious, social, and/or political lenses. Classes will be augmented by film, videos, music, guest speakers, occasional demonstrations, and studio work. One three-hour seminar.

This advanced studio/seminar topics course explores the artistic, social, and cultural implications of hip-hop dance through an intensive focus on the concept of style. Using master classes, academic study, and embodied practice in the studio to develop a physical understanding and detailed social analysis of four specific hip-hop dance genres, we will explore the distinctive cultural influences that shaped each of these diverse forms, as well the deeper movement principles that they share. These principles will then be placed in the larger historical, political and performative context of the Afro-Diasporic experience in the Americas.

Hip-Hop is one of the most important cultural movements of the last half-century. But although hip-hop culture comprises a wide range of artistic practices - including music, dance, theater and graphic arts - its cultural politics are almost always analyzed through the lens of rap music. This seminar, by contrast, will explore the social and historical implications of hip-hop culture through its dance forms.