This is an advanced-level course in contemporary dance technique with a primary focus on movement practice. Using the studio as a laboratory, we will embody increasingly complex and dynamic movement that investigates clarity, freedom, adaptability, and artistry and challenges stamina. Additionally, contemporary dance’s roots and influences will be acknowledged and applied through movement exploration. These include the borrowing and fusing of movement vocabularies from jazz, modern, hip hop, and improvisational dance forms like contact improvisation.

This introductory studio class focuses on multiple ways of tracking, viewing, and capturing bodies in motion and explores choreographic ideas and practice alongside digital media. The course examines various artists’ practices and their creative research to expand the methodologies of art making and experimentation through in-class practices and hands-on projects.

This is an intermediate course in acting that focuses on applying and integrating technique, dramaturgical research, and ensemble playing skills to realized interpretations of scenes, with an emphasis on achieving dynamicly theatrical results. Students will undertake a progression of increasingly challenging scene studies while building skills in physical and speaking expressive capabilities to explore the musicality and power of acting for the stage.

This course will include studio sessions in contemporary dance technique at the intermediate/advanced level, and rehearsal sessions to create original choreography; the new work will be presented in public performance(s). The emphasis in the course will be to increase expressive range, technical skills and the performance versatility of the performer through the practice, creation and performance of choreography. The course will include readings and video viewings to offer a broader understanding of performance and choreography.

This is a course in Jazz dance technique with a primary focus on movement practice, while also exploring the socio-cultural aspects of the genre. Through directed improvisational and structured exercises, students will explore rhythmic complexity, musicality, and emotional and theatrical capacity, alongside physical isolations and technical versatility.

Fall semester. Visiting Instructor Baron.

Pending Faculty Approval

How to handle overenrollment: null

A beginning studio course in the development of voice for speaking. Students develop range and tone through regular physical exercises in relaxation, breathing technique, placement, and presence. Individual attention focuses on helping each student develop the physical, mental, and emotional self-awareness needed for expressive vocal production. Practice is oriented toward acting for the stage, but students with a primary interest in public speaking, teaching, or improved interpersonal communication will find this course valuable. A modicum of reading and written reflection is required.

In this studio course for beginners and intermediate dancers, students will learn about the dance techniques and culture of Hip-Hop, a popular form of Afro-diasporic cultural production and, for many, a lifestyle. Dance is a community thing. Students will learn about what differentiates hip-hop from related dance movements, alongside movements from the funk era, and social party dances from the 80’s to today.

The study and practice of ballet as a contemporary movement vocabulary. Objectives include the intellectual and physical introduction to, or continuing practice in, ballet, as well as increased body awareness, alignment, flexibility, coordination, strength, musical phrasing and the expressive potential of movement. The course material is presented at the beginning/intermediate level.  A half course.  This course may be repeated for credit.

Fall semester.  The Department.

A first college-level course in the fundamentals of acting, with an emphasis on the connections between dramatic action and character. Students learn how to analyze dramatic texts and bring them to life through a collaborative process, and by using body, voice and imagination. Classwork includes regular exercises designed to develop acting craft. Homework includes memorization, regular rehearsals and relevant reading, alongside practical research and short writing in various modes. Assignments progress toward realizing performed scenes.

This introductory course focuses on movement as a language that communicates our thoughts, emotions, beliefs, habits and sensations. We will explore and expand our individual movement vocabularies through improvisation and various movement practices. Each week different practices and themes will be introduced to offer multiple viewpoints, different ways of moving, approaches of dance/performance making and compositional methodologies.