Movement permeates every aspect of life, whether within our bodies, minds, or the world around us. In this studio course open to everyone, we use tools from Laban Movement Analysis to develop ways to dance, improvise, make performance, and fully inhabit our lives. We dive into the roles of dancer, choreographer, audience member, and critic in relation to aesthetic questions, politics, identity, religion, and complex views of the human body. Students can apply our work together to dance in any style as well as to daily experiences like moving into an interview confidently and finding embodied practices for transforming stress.
Sample reading list:
James Baldwin, The Creative Process
John Cage, Four Statements on the Dance
John Simon, The Boo Taboo
Brenda Dixon Gottschild, The Black Dancing Body
John McPhee, Structure: Beyond the Picnic Table Crisis
Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error7
See instructor for complete list
Reading/Writing assignments:
Reading and viewing live and videotaped performances (approx. 2 hours outside classes/week); ongoing creative assignments (approx. 2 hours outside classes/week); several short papers and a final paper (4-6 pages); and participation in an end of semester showing.
Other information:
This is an OPEN ENROLLMENT course.
