This course moves us between temples, courtyards, clubs, streets, and stages around the world to better understand the diversity of dance. Featured movement practices include hip hop, Bharata Natyam, Butoh, and Salsa. This course introduces students to dance across cultures and historical periods, and to dance ethnography, while questioning categories such as classical, traditional,ethnic, folk, and world dance. The course meets once a week; activities include field work and movement assignments, readings, discussions, and viewings of filmed and live performances. Guest artists will teach different dance forms. No prior dance experience is necessary.
Sample reading list:
Cindy Garcia, Salsa Crossings: Dancing Latinidad in Los Angeles
Priya Srinivasan, Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labor
Jorge Popmaster Fabel, Physicial Graffiti: The History of Hip Hop Dance
Sally Ann Ness, Dancing in the Field: Notes from Memory
Brenda Dixon Gottschild, First Premises of an Africanist Aesthetic
Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, Cambodian Dance and the Individual Artist
Reading/Writing assignments:
Each student will conduct a 3-visit participant observation of a Princeton University dance company or community company and discuss the results of this fieldwork using the vocabulary from the class. Two field notes and shorter assignments will contribute to the final paper.
