Performing the Real: Solo and Alternative Performance

Catalog description

This is a class in solo performance composition for performers, dancers and students interested in performance art and its histories. Participants develop a solo performance through exercises using memory, movement and written and visual imagery, and explore the associative strategies of collage and pastiche as methodologies for structuring material. The solos emerge from a process involving improvisation, composing, and revision of material. Readings include performance texts by prominent artists, essays on performance, and video viewings, which foreground the tendency in performance to explore subjectivity and identity in light of social and political critique. Required texts include Jo Bonney"s Extreme Exposure and Lenora Champagne"s Out from Under: Texts by Women Performance Artists . Additional readings are assigned and posted on NYU Classes . Assignments include creating a solo performance from the material developed in class, along with a written analysis of two live solo or alternative performances, and an oral presentation. Strategies learned in this class are also useful for composing group work.