Explore the possibilities of capturing dance on film with award-winning film director Josephine Decker ’03 and critically-acclaimed Vangeline, a dancer/choreographer who specializes in bringing the Japanese postwar avant-garde movement form Butoh into the 21st century. The artists will support students’ creative explorations related to introducing video technology to traditional dance/theater performance forms. At the end of the semester, students will present performance films based on their own collaborations.
Sample reading list:
Kazuo Ohno’s World: From without and within/Edition 1
Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets
Dancing into Darkness: Butoh, Zen, and Japan
Essays by Pawlikowski, Artaud, Godard
Curated film viewings
Reading/Writing assignments:
Students will discuss readings, film viewings, practice filming and editing, and take butoh classes. They will collaborate with each other outside of class as well as in class to workshop their performances and media projects integrating butoh performance and technology. Grading: 80% Other: Individual projects will contribute to our collective butoh and technology performance December 11th.
Prerequisites and Restrictions:
Students with a passion for exploration are encouraged to apply. We are looking to build a collaborative group of students with backgrounds in film, film editing, dance, theater, Japanese studies, Japanese theater, art and design; and computer science to create the final butoh and film performance installation.
Other information:
Vangeline is a teacher, dancer, choreographer specializing in the Japanese postwar avant-garde movement form Butoh. She is Artistic Director of Vangeline Theater, a dance company rooted in the tradition of Japanese Butoh while carrying it into the 21st century. Josephine Decker‘s recent feature films were listed #2 & #10 on New Yorker‘s Top Ten List of 2014. Her work has screened at MoMA, SXSW, Netflix, and as part of Princeton Arts Fellow Pacho Velez’s film series at Princeton University.
