Dance

These classes will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher's technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change at either the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

Dance Meeting convenes all undergraduate students enrolled in a five-credit Dance Third, a three-credit dance study, or a one-credit dance study—along with all of the MFA in Dance graduate students—in meetings that occur roughly once a month. We gather for a variety of activities that enrich and inform the dance curriculum. In addition to sharing department news and information, Dance Meeting features master classes by guest artists from New York City and beyond; workshops with practitioners in dance-related health fields; panels and presentations by distinguished guests, SLC dance faculty, and alumnae; and casting sessions for departmental performances created by the Live Time-Based Art class.

Whenever we make something, we are improvising, or making it up as we go. But imagination and creativity aren’t random. Artists of all disciplines, indeed, have eureka moments and epiphanies; but those “aha” moments are born of practices that engage experimentation, strategies, observation, and decision-making—supported by states of concentration. Similarly, the notions of “perfect forms” and “free improvisation” are theoretical impossibilities. Nothing is ever totally fixed nor ever completely open. No matter what creative endeavor in which we are engaged, we are always in the real world, in a space in between these two extremes. In this course, we will make dances in real time with varying degrees and types of determinacy. We’ll be guided by various concerns and ways of focusing our choices but will be consistently aware that we are composing dance in real time. That will require honing our perceptual skills, as well as our skills of articulation and communication, with our collaborators. Throughout the semester, we’ll develop our abilities both to build coherent structures that will guide our choice-making and to notice and use the serendipity that chance brings. This component is open to students with prior experience in improvisation and dance-making, as well as to those new to the form.

Throughout the year, we will use movement as a powerful vehicle for experiencing, in detail, our profoundly adaptable musculoskeletal anatomy. In the fall semester, students will learn sections of Irene Dowd’s Spirals, a comprehensive warm-up/cool-down for dancing that coordinates all joints and muscles through their fullest range of motion, facilitating study of the musculoskeletal system. In addition to movement practice, drawings are made as part of each week’s lecture (drawing materials provided); problem-solving activities are incorporated throughout the semester. Several short readings and responses will provide opportunities for students to engage primary texts in the field of functional anatomy. In the spring semester, a weekly lecture with definitions, palpation of bony landmarks, and accompanying movement-based activities will support an in-depth understanding of each anatomical component. Development and refinement of technical training, as well as addressing injury prevention and rehabilitation, are central to this semester’s work. Students will be expected to show critical-thinking skills around the concepts presented in class through discussion and written reflection. New perspectives and skills developed in this course will benefit technical development for dancers and movers, as well as provide inspiration in the process of movement invention and composition.

This is an opportunity for students who have completed a full year of anatomy study in the SLC dance program to pursue functional anatomy studies in greater depth. In open consultation with the instructor during class meetings, each student engages in independent research, developing one or more lines of inquiry that utilize functional anatomy perspectives and texts as an organizing framework. Research topics in recent years have included investigation of micropolitics in established dance training techniques, examining connections between movement and emotion, exploring implications of movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, motor and experiential learning, development of a unique warm-up sequence to address specific individual technical issues, inquiry into kinetic experience and its linguistic expression, detailed study of knee-joint anatomy, and study of kinematics and rehabilitation in knee injury. The class meets biweekly to discuss progress, questions, and methods for reporting, writing, and presenting research—alternating with weekly studio/practice sessions for individual and/or group research consultations.

This course will examine the fundamentals of design and how to both think compositionally and work collaboratively as an artist. The medium of light will be used to explore the relationship of art, technology, and movement. Discussion and experimentation will reveal how light defines and shapes an environment. Students will learn a vocabulary to speak about light and to express their artistic ideas. Through hands-on experience, students will practice installing, programming, and operating lighting fixtures and consoles. The artistic and technical skills that they build will then be demonstrated together by creating original lighting designs for the works developed in the Live Time-Based Art course.

This course is an introduction to designing costumes for dance/time-based art. The course will emphasize collaborations with a choreographer and include topics such as: The Creative Process of Design, Where to Begin When Designing for Dance, The Language of Clothes, The Elements of Design, Color Theory, Movement and the Functionality of Dance Costumes, Figure Drawing/Rendering Costumes, and Fabric Dictionary/Fabric Terminology. The course will also cover learning numerous hand and machine stitches, as well as various design-room techniques such as taking measurements, how to fit and alter costumes, and various wardrobe maintenance techniques. Each student in this course will eventually be paired with a student choreographer, with whom he or she will collaborate to realize costumes for the choreographer’s work and which will be presented during the fall or spring departmental dance productions. Throughout the year, students will also create, in a loose-leaf binder, their own Resource Book, which will comprise all handouts, in-class exercises, and notes. The Resource Book will be a useful reference tool as students work on various class assignments and/or departmental productions. This course is designed to give students a basic knowledge of the many intricate creative and technical steps involved in the design process when creating costumes. A deeper understanding of the various aspects of costume design for dance is an enormous tool that can not only enhance one’s overall design skills but also allow the student to communicate more fully during the creative process—whether with fellow designers or as a choreographer or director collaborating with a production team. The Resource Book will also serve as a helpful guide in the future, as the student embarks on his or her own productions at Sarah Lawrence and beyond.

This course is an experimental laboratory that aims to expose students to a diverse set of current voices and approaches to contemporary dance making. Each guest artist will lead a module of three-to-seven class sessions. These mini-workshops will introduce students to that artist and his/her creative process. Guests will present both emergent and established voices and a wide range of approaches to contemporary artistic practice.

Performance Project is a component in which a visiting artist or company is invited to create a work with students or to set an existing piece of choreography. The works are performed for the College community at the end of the semester.

In this class, graduate and upperclass undergraduate students with a special interest and experience in the creation of time-based artworks that include live performance will design and direct individual projects. Students and faculty will meet weekly to view works-in-progress and discuss relevant artistic and practical problems, both in class on Tuesday evenings and in conferences taking place on Thursday afternoons. Attributes of the work across multiple disciplines of artistic endeavor will be discussed as integral and interdependent elements in the work. Participation in mentored, critical-response feedback sessions with your peers is a key aspect of the course. The engagement with the medium of time in live performance, the constraints of presentation of the works both in works-in-progress and in a shared program of events, and the need to respect the classroom and presentation space of the dance studio will be the constraints imposed on the students’ artistic proposals. Students working within any number of live-performance traditions are as welcome in this course as those seeking to transgress orthodox conventions. While all of the works will engage in some way with embodied action, student proposals need not fall neatly into a traditional notion of what constitutes dance. The cultivation of open discourse across traditional disciplinary artistic boundaries, both in the process of developing the works and in the context of presentation to the public, is a central goal of the course. The faculty members leading this course have roots in dance practice but also have practiced expansive definitions of dance within their own creative work. The course will culminate in performances of the works toward the end of the semester in a shared program with all enrolled students and within the context of winter and spring time-based art events. Performances of the works will take place in the Bessie Schönberg Dance Theatre or elsewhere on campus in the case of site-specific work.

Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.

This conditioning uses embodied anatomy, Pilates-based strengthening, body weight exercises, information about cardiovascular fitness, and artistic reflection to build healthy groundwork from which to build a sustained physical dance practice. Each week, we will address a different area of the body with an anatomical lecture, definition and palpation of bony landmarks and activation of specific support structures, and targeted exercises to help build deeper understanding and support. This more intellectual investigation will be applied directly to movement to help develop technical training, as well as to encourage injury prevention and rehabilitation. Students will be expected to show critical-thinking skills around the concepts presented in class. They are expected to be present, attempt exercises, and develop personal modifications when necessary and to show some physical progress throughout the semester. Discussion in class is encouraged, as this is a time to display internal process. It is suggested, though not required, for students to maintain a journal throughout the semester.

Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.

Students will be introduced to the traditional Chinese practices of Tai Chi and Qi Gong. These practices engage with slow, deliberate movements, focusing on the breath, meditative practice, and posture to restore and balance energy—called chi or Qi. The postures flow together, creating graceful dances of continuous motion. Sometimes referred to as one of the soft or internal martial arts, Tai Chi and Qi Gong are foundational practices within a lifelong, holistic self-cultivation in traditional Chinese culture.

In this course, teaching and facilitating the practice of hip-hop/urban dance technique and performance, the class will examine the theory, technique, and vocabulary of hip-hop dance. The course will facilitate the student’s development and ability to execute and perform hip-hop/urban dance steps.

This course will use physical embodiment as a mode of learning about and understanding various West African cultures. In addition to physical practice, supplementary study materials will be used to explore the breadth, diversity, history, and technique of dances found in West Africa. Traditional and social/contemporary dances from countries such as Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast will be explored. Participation in end-of-semester or year-end showings will provide students with the opportunity to apply studies in a performative context.

The Alexander Technique is a system of neuromuscular re-education that enables the student to identify and change poor and inefficient habits that may be causing stress and fatigue. With gentle, hands-on guidance and verbal instruction, the student learns to replace faulty habits with improved coordination by locating and releasing undue muscular tensions. This includes easing of the breath, introducing greater freedom and optimizing performance in all activities. It is a technique that has proven to be profoundly useful for dancers, musicians, and actors and has been widely acclaimed by leading figures in the performing arts, education, and medicine.

In Composition, each student will be charged with creating a short choreography using their classmates as a cast. We will think of choreographing or composing these dances as “the action of combining” or “a putting together, connecting, and arranging.” The course will treat “set” choreography and improvisation as a continuum. We will be dealing with both but will focus on the former, treating improvisation as one of many means of developing choreography as well as potentially using highly scored improvisation in performance as compositional choice-making in real time. The course aims to develop tools that can be of use in this endeavor and to develop skills of analysis and articulation in relationship to our artistic work. Throughout the semester, students will be asked to think and work critically and analytically about the act of composition and the act of perception. A key component will be discussions about what we experience in the work of our colleagues, as well as what our intentions are within our own choice-making. Classes will be structured around in-class choreographic/improvisational exercises, analysis, and discussion in response to choreographic assignments. There will be some homework in creating short choreographic sketches, short readings and viewing of works of art on video and online, and critique and discussion in relation to those works. The class strongly embraces interdisciplinary practices. The goal of the class is to offer a forum through which students can deeply engage with creation, develop their own artistic voices, and investigate new ways of thinking about form through the lens of choreographic inquiry.

Film has become one of the most dominant forms of visual media and creative expression. In this seminar/workshop for the budding director, we will first focus on the filmmaking fundamentals that every filmmaker needs to know in order to tell an effective story on screen: basic filmmaking terms, crew positions, camera operation, shot angles and composition, camera movement, basic lighting, sound recording, and editing. Students will also learn to how to create shot lists, floor plans, and other important tools necessary for a successful shoot. Initially, solo shooting assignments will be given, allowing students to begin to develop their own cinematic voice. Because collaboration is key in filmmaking, students will also be divided into small groups for several weekly assignments, giving them the opportunity to serve in various roles on the crew. The idea is for students to acquire the skills needed for creating compelling cinematic work on their own and with others.

Film has become one of the most dominant forms of visual media and creative expression. In this seminar/workshop for the budding director, we will first focus on the filmmaking fundamentals that every filmmaker needs to know in order to tell an effective story on screen: basic filmmaking terms, crew positions, camera operation, shot angles and composition, camera movement, basic lighting, sound recording, and editing. Students will also learn to how to create shot lists, floor plans, and other important tools necessary for a successful shoot. Initially, solo shooting assignments will be given, allowing students to begin to develop their own cinematic voice. Because collaboration is key in filmmaking, students will also be divided into small groups for several weekly assignments, giving them the opportunity to serve in various roles on the crew. The idea is for students to acquire the skills needed for creating compelling cinematic work both on their own and with others.

Athens, London, Paris, Berlin, New York...the history of Western theatre has always been associated with cities, their politics, their customs, their geography, their audiences. This course will track the story of theatre as it originates in the Athens of the fifth-century BCE and evolves into its different expressions and practices in cities of later periods, all of them seen as “capitals” of civilization. Does theatre civilize, or is it merely a reflection of any given civilization whose cultural assumptions inform its values and shape its styles? Given that ancient Greek democracy gave birth to tragedy and comedy in civic praise of the god Dionysos—from a special coupling of the worldly and the sacred—what happens when these genres recrudesce in the unsavory precincts of Elizabethan London, the polished court of Louis XIV, the beer halls of Weimar Berlin, and the neon “palaces” of Broadway? Sometimes the genres themselves are challenged by experiments in new forms or by performances deliberately situated in unaccustomed places. By tinkering with what audiences have come to expect or where they have come to assemble, do playwrights like Euripides, Brecht, and Sarah Kane destabilize civilized norms? Grounding our work in Greek theatre, we will address such questions in a series of chronological investigations of the theatre produced in each city: Athens and London in the first semester; Paris, Berlin, and New York in the second.

Experiment and explore contemporary performance art. Through surveying a range of important artworks and movements, we will review the histories, concepts, and practices of performance art. Born from anti-art, performance art challenges the boundaries of artistic expression through implementing, as material, the concepts of space, time, and the body. Examples of artists that we will review are John Cage, Joan Jonas, Adrian Piper, Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler, Simone Forti, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Pope.L, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Janine Antoni, Suzanne Lacy, Aki Sasamoto, and Anna Halprin, to name a few. We will review dialogues and movements introducing performance art, such as art interventions, sculpture, installation art, institutional critique, protest art, social media, video art, happenings, dada, comedy, sound art, graphic notation, scores, collaboration, and dance/movement. Students will be able to relate the form and function of performance art through research, workshopping ideas, experimentation, and improvisation—thereby developing the ability to confidently implement any method of the performance art genre.

Since the early 20th century, artists have explored performance art as a radical means of expression. In both form and function, performance pushes the boundaries of contemporary art. Artists use the medium for institutional critique, for social activism, and to address the personal politics of gender, sexuality, and race. This course approaches performance art as a porous, transdisciplinary medium open to students from all disciplines, including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture, video, filmmaking, theatre, dance, music, creative writing, and digital art. Students learn about the legacy of performance art from the 1970s to the present and explore some of the concepts and aesthetic strategies used to create works of performance. Through texts, artists’ writings, video screenings, and slide lectures, students are introduced to a range of performance-based artists and art movements.