This studio course is open to beginning and advanced dancers. We’ll explore dance as a way to deepen both our self-knowledge and engagement with others. We’ll delve into dance as meditation, using tools from ecstatic dance, yin yoga, and improvisation to establish a personal practice. We’ll examine genre-bending performances occurring outside of theaters and study how dance reflects- and can change -contemporary issues, taking up such topics as power, class and gender. In final creative projects, we’ll look at artists/dancers as entrepreneurs and catalysts for change in our own communities.
Sample reading list:
Ralph Lemon, Tree: Belief/Culture/Balance
Rebecca Solnit, Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable
Miguel Gutierrez, When You Rise Up
Jill Sigman, Notes on Gender
Mark Franko, The Word of Dance: Labor, Movement & Identity in the 1930s
Nato Thompson, ed, Living As Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011
See instructor for complete list
Reading/Writing assignments:
Ongoing creative and reflective assignments (approx. 2 hours outside class/week); reading, viewing live and videotaped performances (approx. 2 hours outside classes/week), several short response papers and a final project.
Other information:
DAN 214 is designed for both beginning and advanced dance students and meets twice a week. Attendance in all classes and completion of all work required including: creative assignments, papers and participation in final public project is required to pass the course. There are seats reserved for each class year. All unused reserved seats will be released to all class years for further enrollment during the Add/ Drop period.
