Dance 377 - ADV STUD HIST & AESTHETICS DAN

This course explores a specific idea, concept, period, person or event important in the history and/or aesthetics of dance. Topics vary depending on the instructor's research and expertise. 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 work that persue radically different methods, materials and strategies for provoking new ideas about dance, body and the corporeal aesthetics. Taking in the vast spectrum of new-age performance (live and virtualized), we 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 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 inspace 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 performance constitute a distinct socio-political 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 thechnology, text, sets and lighting in developing multidisciplinary performance art works? How have millennial dance artists instigated new frames and viewing positions from which to understand how dance communicates? In essence, we are looking at a fresh new group of self-and-socially conscious artists/activists who insist on speaking directly to their own generation.

Topic: New Millennium Choreography.