Global Arc

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.

This course will be a unique venture into dance culminating in a performance for the Princeton Dance Festival. This studio course explores dance-theatre practice to address the desires, needs, and realities of the body and its greater community, centering the politics of self and group care. We will improvise in movement, somatics, vocal sound, song, spoken and written words, creating for and with each other, with the outcome being a greatly expanded skill set for the performing artist. Studio movement practice, creation and discussion will be supplemented by selected readings and out-of-studio creation as a practice of joy and resilience.

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.