Dance (DANC-GT)

Open only to students in the Department of Dance. Faculty and guest artists. 2-8 points per semester. Daily classes in ballet and contemporary dance techniques. Includes pointe class, men?s class, partnering, and pilates, somatics and yoga.

Writing is a powerful tool, both in the artistic process and in the world of production and career. In this course we will work to strengthen articulation, clarity, and overall writing skills. Assignments will address various applications of writing for dance, through themed writing assignments, exploration of academic and creative writing styles, and immersion into relevant scholarship and research methodologies. The course will also assist students in development of a personal trajectory in their personal thesis process. Students will emerge from the class with writing skills that give them a sharper artistic perspective, and a clearer sense of their own direction in the dance world.

Open only to students in the Department of Dance. Departmental elective for B.F.A. and M.F.A. students. Cummings. 2-4 points per semester. Choreographers work on individual and collaborative projects that explore the relationship between text and movement. Creative projects, in collaboration with the Department of Design for Stage and Film and the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, are performed in concert at the conclusion of the course.

Open only to students in the Department of Dance. Departmental elective for B.F.A. and M.F.A. students. Cummings. 2-4 points per semester. Choreographers work on individual and collaborative projects that explore the relationship between text and movement. Creative projects, in collaboration with the Department of Design for Stage and Film and the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, are performed in concert at the conclusion of the course.

Independent Study MFA

Independent Study for MFA in Dance

The Science of Movement will introduce students to the multidisciplinary field of motor learning and control. This course is appropriate for graduate students with an interest in human movement, neuroscience and behavior, physical education, dance and/or athletics. No prior course of study in neuroscience is necessary to successfully engage with the course material.

Collaborative Strategies in Interactive Media (CSIM) is a semester-long graduate course that explores how interdisciplinary artistic creation through collaboration is a necessary skill to develop. This class invites artists of various genres, technologists, and researchers, to work together to produce interactive media performances that expound on modes of presentation and audience engagement. Students will experiment with programming tools, artistic practices, theoretical frameworks, and collaborative models to create shared works that integrate sound, video, text, AI and other emergent technologies into live and digital performance contexts. Experience working in and through technology is not a requirement to take this course. This course emphasizes both hands-on experimentation and critical reflection. Each week, students will engage in collaborative labs, rotating roles within teams, and structured dialogues that foreground the creative process as much as the final outcome. Students will be encouraged to bring their own artistic, scholarly, technological, and embodied practices into the making studio, situating them within broader discourses of shared authorship and social context. Central to the course is the idea that collaboration is not just a method, but a medium in itself. We will explore collaboration as a site of friction, negotiation, and innovation; fostering— collaborative ecologies. Readings, screenings, and case studies will provide structures that can contextualize both contemporary and preceding works within cultural, political, and technological landscapes. Programming-focused sessions will serve as prototyping dialogues, enabling students to test how generating and using both collected and originally composed media content can be shaped in a collective artistic voice in collaborative environments. Guiding questions include: - What determines hierarchy and can it be disassembled within a collaborative process? - How does technology expand an artist’s creative capacity beyond individual expression? - In what ways can programming languages serve as tools for communication, collaboration, and authorship in art? - How can semiotics, symbolism, and cultural context inform interactive collaborative practices? - What happens when performance extends beyond the body through technological mediation? - How can collaboration itself become a critical artistic statement?

Dance Music: A Laboratory for Choreographers and Composers

Graduate Dance Seminar provides an opportunity for faculty to share topics and creative perspectives in a modular format, usually in 4-week rotating sessions. Modules will focus on creative approaches (improvisation, composition), cross-pollination between disciplines (dance and imagery, music/dance perspectives, dance with text, etc), and other aspects of the field to be determined. The course will conform to each module's needs, facilitating both studio work and classroom-based seminars or presentations.

Graduate Dance Seminar: Insights and Approaches II

Worldmaking is a semester-long composition course for MFA students. Structured as a laboratory with body-based explorations, group discussions, and collaborative experiments, this course will offer many ways for the cohort to engage with and propose new compositional systems. Through improvisational modes, algorithmic scores, and game-based ideas we will generate relational strategies for building provisional worlds. World-building involves imagining, transmitting, testing, constructing, inhabiting and performing. Students will collaborate to search, gather and sort a new lexicon with cross-pollinating ideas. The process will be documented using analog tools, memory, written descriptions, drawings and cameras. The sensorial experiences, modalities and structures that emerge will be translated into living archives that account for the ephemerality inherent in dance. Advanced undergraduate choreographers can take this course upon permission.

Pedagogy

Current Topics in Dance Studies

Movement Science Sensors Lab

This course is designed to develop the business skill sets necessary for a successful and sustainable career in the arts. Designed for individuals across artistic disciplines, and for students of business, the course utilizes proven corporate Strategic Planning methods adapted for the arts The course provides the tools to develop and articulate clear strategies for achieving short and long- term goals, increasing productivity, effectively managing time and attaining financial literacy and solvency. Through weekly lectures and practical exercises, topics including marketing, fundraising, written and verbal communications, grant writing, work samples and internet presence will be explored. Case studies of artists who have successfully incorporated these best practices will be examined. Throughout the semester, students will apply the content of each weekly topic to their own projects. By the semester's conclusion, each student will have a fully realized Strategic Plan for their work.

Graduate students enrolled in Real-time Movement/Sound Composition join an undergraduate Ensemble course (Real-time Movement/Sound Composition, DANC-UT 600), that molds participants into an ensemble capable of performing movement/sound improvisations, i.e. collaborative compositions made in real time. This graduate course adds separate Wednesday meetings (with homework) to examine and determine strategies and structures for exploring how the differences and similarities between movement-making and sound-making, and between their compositional practices, may help diversify and regulate improvised material over the duration of a performance. Enrollment by audition - please contact instructor for more information.

This course is a continuation of classical ballet training designed for students who have had previous ballet experience and are currently looking to enhance their technical and performance skills. Students will explore the different styles of ballet training and performance presentation through practice, video viewing and discussions. A thorough ballet-barre will be given in each class. Students will then explore center practices. The technical content is based on intermediate-to-advanced-level class with the goal to refine adagio, turns and jumps in the center. Through the instruction of proper alignment and dynamic imagery, students will learn how to dance safely and improve their technical skills effectively. Students will also get to experience the various styles of ballet through learning and practicing different classical variations in class.