Post Modern Dance: Turning Dance Upside Down

Catalog description

In this workshop, we depart from traditional dance composition courses by focusing on the concepts, strategies, and actions that occupy contemporary experimental choreographers. We spend most of our time in the studio, moving through physical warm-ups structured to prepare ourselves for developing dance material informed by live performances, videos, guest appearances, and readings by and about dance-makers, from the first post-modernists of the1960s through those continuing their lineage and those exploring completely different paths. We consider dance as an element of interarts performance; work joining dance and technology; dance-making as social activism and an opportunity to explore worldly and sociocultural phenomena; site-specific choreography; and improvisation as both an autonomous movement practice and a way to generate movement for choreography. We borrow, of course, from what students bring to the workshop: their individual dance histories as well as their interests and desires. Readings may include essays by Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Ralph Lemon, Simone Forti, Jonathan Burrows, Miguel Gutierrez, André Lepecki, Allan Kaprow, Thomas DeFrantz, Will Rawls, and Nancy Stark Smith.