Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0323 - New Millennium Choreography

This course looks at the vast and diverse cultural and aesthetic landscape of dance performance in the millennium and the new breed of choreographers making cutting-edge works that pursue radically different methods, materials and strategies for provoking new ideas about dance, body, and corporeal aesthetics. Taking in the vast spectrum of new-age performance (live and virtualized), we will ask such questions as: How does non-narrative dance focus on the body as an instrument with unlimited possibilities, without the impetus of stories, emotions, ideas, specific external images? How do heterosexuality, homosexuality, and androgeny constitute a gender spectrum in new works? How do we watch and evaluate dances from culturally specific traditions? How, in improvisational performance, do we watch people moving with each other and in space when there is no clear beginning, middle, or end; and how is the viewer challenged to see the point of people balancing, lifting, falling, and rolling? How do community-based performances constitute a distinct sociopolitical theme in dance works? How do site-specific works illuminate the thematic content of a work and various spaces for the viewer? How do choreographers utilize technology, text, sets, and lighting in developing multidisciplinary performance art works? Lastly, and most importantly, how have millennial dance artists instigated new frames and viewing positions from which to understand how dance communicates; and how are they inspiring a new generation of self-and-socially conscious artists/activists who insist on speaking directly to their own generation?

Independent Work In this course, students will be expected to spend 6 to 8 hours of preparation and work outside of class time.