This course is designed as an opportunity for the student to work as an assistant to a guest choreographer during their process of creating new choreography or restaging original choreography. The student will experience the applied nature of critical thinking, problem solving, and collaboration within the choreographic process as the choreographer also administrates the more managerial responsibilities of scheduling and time management. The student will be fully immersed in the unique bifurcated interplay of the dialogic and the corporeal of the choreographic process. The experience should enhance the student's already burgeoning choreographic process. Following the residency, the student will take over the rehearsal process through to tech week and the performances. May be repeated once. Permission of faculty required.
Course Attributes:
Methodologies of Global Dance Studies
DANCE 514
This course introduces graduate students to methodologies of dance studies. In line with current scholarship, the course emphasizes a global perspective, thinking about the practice of dance in a wide spectrum of spaces and places, including the streets of Oakland, California, the milonga dance halls of Argentina, and the temples of India. We will pay attention both to questions of aesthetics and to how political and cultural contexts influence the practice of dance. Students will learn methods of ethnography, history, and practice-as-research as applied to dance; we will also analyze how dance scholars use feminist theory, critical race theory, queer theory, phenomenology, and performance studies in their work. As a final project, students conduct research on a topic of their choosing and present their results as either a written seminar paper or a performance ethnography.
Course Attributes:
Performance Artistry
DANCE 512
This course offers the MFA in Dance student an opportunity to receive credit for performing in public in choreography crafted by a Washington University dance faculty, or guest artist choreographers for Washington University Dance Theatre, in choreography presented by WU Dance Collective (the PAD repertory company), or by the Center for Contemporary Arts' Co-Artistic Director of Dance, Antonio Douthit-Boyd.
Course Attributes:
Independent Choreography Project III
DANCE 5113
This course is designed to assist the MFA students in the development of their craft as choreographers prior to committing to their final projects. The point of entry for each student may depend on his or her previous study of composition or experience within the profession. Each student composes a study or work-in-progress, a dance or dances which culminates in a public showing or concert of the work, on or off-campus, or with WashU Dance Collective, the resident company directed by Cecil Slaughter. The ongoing work is to be shown 3-4 times a semester to the instructor of record and/or adviser, and any other Performing Arts Department faculty and/or Antonio Douthit-Boyd or Kirven Douthit-Boyd of the Center of Contemporary Arts (COCA) that the student wishes to invite for the viewing and response session.
Course Attributes:
Independent Choreography Project I
DANCE 511
This course is designed to assist the MFA students in the development of their craft as choreographers prior to committing to their final projects. The point of entry for each student may depend on his or her previous study of composition or experience within the profession. Each student composes a study or work-in-progress, a dance or dances which culminates in a public showing or concert of the work, on or off-campus, or with WashU Dance Collective, the resident company directed by Cecil Slaughter. The ongoing work is to be shown 3-4 times a semester to the instructor of record and/or adviser, and any other Performing Arts Department faculty and/or Antonio Douthit-Boyd or Kirven Douthit-Boyd of the Center of Contemporary Arts (COCA) that the student wishes to invite for the viewing and response session.
Course Attributes:
Approaches to Improvisation and Spontaneous Composition
DANCE 510
The graduate studio workshop in dance improvisation emphasizes individual and ensemble performance practice through a combination of structured assignments, independent work, and participation in a collaborative workshop environment. In this course, students learn and create processes for improvising dance/performance art, with an aim toward developing integrated skill in: dance technique, intuitive movement invention, partnered dancing, collaborative process, performance presence/expressivity, and compositional form. Improvised practice develops processes for performance applicable to stage, site-specific and camera-based artistic venues, and refines individual and ensemble performance artistry. Students will review history of aesthetic theory and processes developed by improvisation artists of the 20th century. In-class discussion fosters critical thinking/analysis, facilitates dialogue on process, and supports development of artistry and virtuosic performance.
Prerequisite: previous or concurrent study of dance composition (L29 508, 509). This course may be taken by qualified undergraduate dance majors or minors who have completed 203 (or 208), 303 (or 309), 3101 and with permission of instructor.
Course Attributes:
Dance Composition Laboratory I: Exploring Process and Format
DANCE 508
The studio workshop in dance composition for graduate students emphasizes individual artistic development through a combination of structured assignments, independent work, interaction with visiting artists, and participation in a shared workshop environment. Expanding upon previous applicable skills and experience, graduate students are encouraged to explore and develop personal aesthetic in movement vocabulary, genre, method and process. Consultation with the course instructor supports clarification of the student's choreographic intention and general development of the student's artwork. Group critiques by faculty and students contribute analysis and facilitate dialogue regarding both process and artwork. This course may be taken by qualified undergraduate senior dance majors or minors who have completed 203 (or 208) and 303 (or 309), with permission of instructor.
Course Attributes:
Topics in Contemporary Arts Practice Research
DANCE 506
When a place disappears-a building, a forest, a town, a river-where do its stories go? In this practice-based course, students will use technologies like augmented and virtual reality, ArcGIS mapping, and data analysis to resurrect a historical space and story pertinent to their own research interests. Importantly, technological skills are not required to take this studio course. Students from any discipline are invited to either prototype a final project or write a critically engaged description of such a prototype. Through readings on performance theory and collective memory as well as analysis of recent digital artworks like Mel Chin's "Unmoored" (which submerged Times Square in life-sized holograms of rising seas), and "Border Memorial: Frontera de los Muertos," (which uses geolocated mobile AR to map and visualize the thousands of migrant workers who have died along the US/Mexico border), this class will imagine the possibilities and pitfalls of using new technologies to envision the lost, the stolen, and the erased.
Course Attributes:
Dance Repertory
DANCE 458
Under the direction of an experienced choreographer, students rehearse and perfect repertory concert dances. May be repeated once for credit. Prerequisite: Permission of the Coordinator of the Dance Division. Enrollment by audition. Concurrent registration in a technique class is required.
Course Attributes: EN H; AS HUM
Classical Ballet III
DANCE 4281
Designed for dancers with a solid foundation in beginning and intermediate ballet technique. Related reading, research paper/discussion, video assignments; attendance at 1-2 ballet performnces. Variable content; may be repeated for credit in a subsequent semester. Prerequisite: permission of instructor and B+ or better in Dance 3221 and 415 or 416.
Course Attributes: EN H; AS HUM; FA HUM; AR HUM
