Music for Choreography

Catalog description

"This course is a 1-credit continuation of the 6-credit Music for Dance (Music I Dance) sequence DANC-UT 1002 (Fall semester) and 1003 (Spring semester). That 6-credit sequence is notable for its breadth, exposing students to a wide array of musical pieces, musical ideas, and their use and application in choreography. This 1-credit continuation offers a chance to work with one piece of music in depth, as well as to study the origins and characteristics of those works that each of the students in the course chooses to choreograph. More specifically, at the beginning of the semester each student selects a track from the course playlist. The course playlist consists of approximately eighty sound/music recordings of works composed in the last sixty years. The works have few if any lyrics, and they tend to be experimental in nature, although they span multiple genres. They are complete works, or complete sections, parts, or movements of musical works. The student-selected tracks form the basis of the course. Over the first half of the course each work will be discussed in depth in class, and students will be quizzed about the information disseminated. During this time students also choreograph movement material to be added to the music, arrange it for presentation, and video a first draft of a dance to the music. The class discusses the videos and generates feedback, which each student may use to edit and revise their work for live presentation during class time near the end of the semester. About 70% of the course is on choreographing their work; the other 30% is about studying their own and other students music closely, and offering constructive feedback to each other on their choreography and their use of music."