Dance

Students will enroll in a combination of component classes in dance, including an academic study in dance, improvisation, and a selection of movement practice classes at the appropriate level and with various instructors throughout the week. Together, these studies will make up the First-Year Studies in Dance. (Please refer to the component class descriptions.) The Improvisation course, taught by John Jasperse in the fall, is a required component for all FYS in Dance students. This course will include other students at the College and the entire FYS cohort; it is the heart of FYS in Dance. Here, we will explore making dance, starting with real-time composition in improvisation and progressing through the year to create short pieces of choreography in the spring. Students will be dancing in the studio every day. Throughout the fall semester, we’ll meet occasionally in sessions that bring us into exchanges with other creative arts-based FYS cohorts. Students will also meet in individual conferences with John Jasperse each week throughout the fall semester and in biweekly conferences in the spring semester to develop individual conference projects based on their particular interests and the materials explored in their classes.

This course is an experimental laboratory that aims to expose students to a diverse set of current voices and approaches to contemporary dance making. Each guest artist will lead a module of three-to-seven class sessions. These mini-workshops will introduce students to that artist and his/her creative process. Guests will present both emergent and established voices and a wide range of approaches to contemporary artistic practice.

Dance Meeting convenes all undergraduate students enrolled in a five-credit Dance Third, a three-credit dance study, or a one-credit dance study—along with all of the MFA in Dance graduate students—in meetings that occur roughly once a month. We gather for a variety of activities that enrich and inform the dance curriculum. In addition to sharing department news and information, Dance Meeting features master classes by guest artists from New York City and beyond; workshops with practitioners in dance-related health fields; panels and presentations by distinguished guests, SLC dance faculty, and alumnae; and casting sessions for departmental performances created by the Live Time-Based Art class.

In this class, graduates and upper-class undergraduates with a special interest and experience in the creation of time-based artworks that include live performance will design and direct individual projects. Students and faculty will meet weekly to view works-in-progress and discuss relevant artistic and practical problems, both in class on Tuesday evenings and in conferences taking place on Thursday afternoons. Attributes of the work across multiple disciplines of artistic endeavor will be discussed as integral and interdependent elements in the work. Participation in mentored, critical-response feedback sessions with your peers is a key aspect of the course. The engagement with the medium of time in live performance, the constraints of presentation of the works, both in works-in-progress and in a shared program of events, and the need to respect the classroom and presentation space of the dance studio will be the constraints imposed on the students’ artistic proposals. Students working within any number of live performance traditions are as welcome in this course as those seeking to transgress orthodox conventions. While all of the works will engage in some way with embodied action, student proposals need not fall neatly into a traditional notion of what constitutes dance. The cultivation of open discourse across traditional disciplinary artistic boundaries, both in the process of developing the works and in the context of presentation to the public, is a central goal of the course. The faculty members leading this course have roots in dance practice but also have practiced expansive definitions of dance within their own creative work. This course will culminate in performances of the works toward the end of the semester in a shared program with all enrolled students and within the context of winter and spring time-based art events. Performances of the works will take place in the Bessie Schönberg Dance Theatre or elsewhere on campus in the case of site-specific work.

These classes will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher's technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change at either the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

Throughout the year, we will use movement as a powerful vehicle for experiencing, in detail, our profoundly adaptable musculoskeletal anatomy. In the fall semester, students will learn sections of Irene Dowd’s Spirals, a comprehensive warm-up/cool-down for dancing that coordinates all joints and muscles through their fullest range of motion, facilitating study of the musculoskeletal system. In addition to movement practice, drawings are made as part of each week’s lecture (drawing materials provided); problem-solving activities are incorporated throughout the semester. Several short readings and responses will provide opportunities for students to engage primary texts in the field of functional anatomy. In the spring semester, a weekly lecture with definitions, palpation of bony landmarks, and accompanying movement-based activities will support an in-depth understanding of each anatomical component. Development and refinement of technical training, as well as addressing injury prevention and rehabilitation, are central to this semester’s work. Students will be expected to show critical-thinking skills around the concepts presented in class through discussion and written reflection. New perspectives and skills developed in this course will benefit technical development for dancers and movers, as well as provide inspiration in the process of movement invention and composition.

This course will examine the fundamentals of design and how to both think compositionally and work collaboratively as an artist. The medium of light will be used to explore the relationship of art, technology, and movement. Discussion and experimentation will reveal how light defines and shapes an environment. Students will learn a vocabulary to speak about light and to express their artistic ideas. Through hands-on experience, students will practice installing, programming, and operating lighting fixtures and consoles. The artistic and technical skills that they build will then be demonstrated together by creating original lighting designs for the works developed in the Live Time-Based Art course.

Performance Project is a component in which a visiting artist or company is invited to create a work with students or to set an existing piece of choreography. The works are performed for the College community at the end of the semester.

This course is an introduction to designing costumes for dance/time-based art. The course will emphasize collaborations with a choreographer and include topics such as: The Creative Process of Design; Where to Begin When Designing for Dance; The Language of Clothes; The Elements of Design; Color Theory; Movement and the Functionality of Dance Costumes; Figure Drawing/Rendering Costumes and Fabric Dictionary/Fabric Terminology. The course will also cover learning numerous hand and machine stitches, as well as various design-room techniques such as taking measurements, how to fit and alter costumes, and various wardrobe maintenance techniques. Each student in this course will eventually be paired with a student choreographer with whom he or she will collaborate to realize costumes for the choreographer’s work and which will be presented during the fall or spring departmental dance productions. Students will also be creating in a loose-leaf binder their own Resource Book throughout the year, which will comprise all handouts, in-class exercises ,and notes. The Resource Book will be a useful reference tool as students work on various class assignments and/or departmental productions. This course is designed to give students a basic knowledge of the many intricate creative and technical steps involved in the design process when creating costumes. A deeper understanding of the various aspects of costume design for dance is an enormous tool that can not only enhance one’s overall design skills but also allow the student to communicate more fully during the creative process—whether with fellow designers or as a choreographer or director collaborating with a production team.
The Resource Book will also serve as a helpful guide in the future, as the student embarks on his or her own productions at Sarah Lawrence and beyond.

Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, with an emphasis on anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.

The Alexander Technique is a system of neuromuscular re-education that enables the student to identify and change poor and inefficient habits that may be causing stress and fatigue. With gentle, hands-on guidance and verbal instruction, the student learns to replace faulty habits with improved coordination by locating and releasing undue muscular tensions. This includes easing of the breath, introducing greater freedom, and optimizing performance in all activities. It is a technique that has proven to be profoundly useful for dancers, musicians, and actors and has been widely acclaimed by leading figures in the performing arts, education, and medicine.

Whenever we make something, we are improvising—making it up as we go. But imagination and creativity aren’t random. Artists of all disciplines indeed have eureka moments and epiphanies, but those “aha” moments are born of practices that engage experimentation, strategies, observation, and decision-making—supported by states of concentration. Similarly, the notions of “perfect forms” and “free improvisation” are theoretical impossibilities. Nothing is ever totally fixed—nor is it ever completely open. No matter what creative endeavor in which we are engaged, we are always in the real world, in a space between the two extremes. In this course, we will make dances in real time with varying degrees and types of determinacy. We’ll be guided by various concerns and ways of focusing our choices but will be consistently aware that we are composing dance in real time. That will require honing our perceptual skills, as well as our skills of articulation and communication, with our collaborators. Throughout the semester, we’ll develop our abilities both to build coherent structures that will guide our choice making and to notice and use the serendipity that chance brings. This component is open to students with prior experience in improvisation and dance-making, as well as to those new to the form.

In this open-level course, teaching and facilitating the practice of hip-hop/urban dance technique and performance, the class will examine the theory, technique, and vocabulary of hip-hop dance. The course will facilitate the student’s development and ability to execute and perform hip-hop/urban dance steps.

When we write about dance, movement arts, and performance practice, how can we address and unpack the politics and power dynamics inherently at play in authorship, spectatorship, participatory experience, and research? How might our individual intersectional subjectivities be avenues into engaging the act of meaning-making while witnessing, conversing with, and archiving dance and performance? In this seminar, we will study various historical and current relationships of writing to movement-based performance practice, tracing the legacy of dance criticism and its subsequent evolution, as a point of departure. We will look at a myriad of forms of dance writing that exemplify different potentials for relationship to and between performer and witness, including but not limited to dance criticism, embedded criticism, autotheory, writing on advocacy and ethics within the dance field, transcribed interviews and conversations with dance and movement artists, and artists’ “process notes.” We will also look at texts that are not directly situated within dance studies but that emerge from various feminist and queer lineages in which theory, research, and critique have become modes that evoke a deepening of relationship between subjectivity, environment, and art-making. In addition to reading and discussing various forms of dance writing, students will develop their own writing practice in conversation with filmed footage of dance performances and rehearsals and live dance performances and rehearsals. Students will be expected to attend two live performances over the course of the semester. 

This yoga class is designed with the interests of dancers and theatre students in mind. Various categories of postures will be practiced, with attention to alignment, breath awareness, strength, and flexibility. The physical practice includes seated and standing poses, twists, forward bends and backbends, traditional yogic breathing practices, and short meditations. Emphasis is placed on mindfulness and presence. This approach allows the student to gain tools for reducing stress and addressing unsupportive habits to carry into other aspects of their lives. Attention will be given to the chakra system as a means and metaphor for postural, movement, and character choices. The instructor has a background in dance and object theatre, in addition to various somatically-based practices that she draws upon for designing the classes to meet the individual needs of the class members.

This component will provide students with the opportunity to play a full array of percussion instruments from around the globe: African djembes, Brazilian zurdos, Argentinian bombo, Peruvian cajon and quijada, Indian tabla, traditional traps, and more. Students will also be able to program and execute electronic drums such as the Wavedrum and Handsonic. The focus will be prevalent toward enhancing a dancer's full knowledge of music but also will expand the vocabulary for choreographers, actors, and composers, as well. The component will grant students the tools needed to fully immerse themselves in the understanding of the relation of music, dance, and the performing arts. Students will expand their knowledge of terminology and execution and will be able to learn the basic rudiments of notation. We will analyze the interaction of music from both intellectual and cultural points of view. We will learn how to scan musical scores with various degrees of complexity and explore the diverse rhythmic styles that have developed through time and through different geographical and social conditions. Classes will consist of group playing. All instruments will be provided and available for practice.

All dance is political, simply because it is created by a human being who is of a particular place and time. Thus, the work is inherently commenting on that particular place and time. Using this framework, we will take a deep dive into American dance history from Reconstruction to today with an eye on tackling the questions: 1) How did this thing we refer to as American dance come to be? 2) Who or what is missing from the canon, and why? 3) How do we place ourselves inside of this lineage? We will examine a combination of video and live performance, newspaper archives, historical pop culture, and scholarly and philosophical writings that range from aesthetics to African diaspora principles, as well as feminist, queer, Black, Latinx, Indigenous, AAPI, and disability theory, in order to create a timeline of American movement from the 19th century to the 21st century: 1860–2023, African-American social dance from Reconstruction through your Tik-Tok feed; 1890–1930s, the mothers of American modern dance; 1920–1940s, power to the people—the democratization of concert dance and the WPA; 1940–1960s, the “no” generation: on Judson and the emergence of post-modern dance; 1960s–1990s, the return to “I”—on coming home to the self; 2000s–2010s, hit me baby one more time—the maximilism of the millenium; and 2010s–2024: say their name—the urgency of the now. With a keen understanding of the state of the world at the point of creation, students will develop a critical eye through which to view performance: Moving beyond an aesthetic understanding of choreographic forms, how were these choreographic forms influenced by the political and social norms of the day? Further, students will begin to develop an understanding of how contemporary American dance is in constant conversation with dance of the past, sharpening their skill sets by capturing reflections in a weekly journal entry. Additionally, students will create a dance family tree, using their artistic interest as the groundwork to trace their own movement lineage across time. Simply, how did you come to dance the way that you do? Students will also be expected to attend two performances over the course of the semester, one contemporary and one historical work. This course should be pretty light in terms of weekly homework; weekly journaling should take about a half-hour. I anticipate framing that journaling in respect to students’ thinking about their own artistic interests so that they are developing source material to create their dance family tree over the course of the semester. The performances and the family tree project will be the most time-consuming. We could also dedicate some class time to peer-to-peer workshopping of that project in order to ease the homework load.

This course will use physical embodiment as a mode of learning about and understanding various West African cultures. In addition to physical practice, supplementary study materials will be used to explore the breadth, diversity, history, and technique of dances found in West Africa. Traditional and social/contemporary dances from countries such as Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast will be explored. Participation in end-of-semester or year-end showings will provide students with the opportunity to apply studies in a performative context.

Salsa music and dance, as in other forms of social dance, was a means to communicate a reflection of the human condition in celebration, mourning, pain, resistance, and/or healing. From Africa to Cuba, Puerto Rico, and New York, this music and dance form continues to evolve through influences of Indigenous, African, and New York City music sounds. This course will cover basic salsa dance movements to the clave and montuno in an open format and how to translate that movement into a closed partner style. No previous dance preparation or partner is required.

The performance of a play is a complex cultural event that involves far more than the literary text upon which it is grounded. First, there is the theatre itself—a building of a certain shape and utility within a certain neighborhood of a certain city. On stage, we have actors and their training, gesture, staging, music, dance, costumes, possibly scenery and lighting. Offstage, we have the audience, its makeup, and its reactions; the people who run the theatre and the reasons why they do it; and finally the social milieu in which the theatre exists. In this course, we study all of these elements as a system of signs that convey meaning (semiotics)—a world of meaning whose lifespan is a few hours but whose significances are ageless. The plays of Shakespeare are our texts. Reconstructing the performances of those plays in the England of Elizabeth I and James I is our starting place. Seeing how those plays have been approached and re-envisioned over the centuries is our journey. Tracing their elusive meanings—from within Shakespeare’s Wooden O to their adaptation in contemporary film—is our work.

The Greek gods attended the performances at the ancient theatre of Dionysos, which both recognized and challenged their participation in human affairs. The immediacy of divine presence enabled a civic body, the city, to enter into conversation with a cosmic one—a conversation whose subject was a shared story about the nature of experience and its possible significance: tragedy. Divinity is less congenial about playgoing in later periods but seems to have lent tragedy both a power to be reborn and a determination to address the universe even as Christianity, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Industrial Age reimagine it. In this course, we shall read essential Western texts in which the constant of human suffering is confronted and the gods are called into question even as they shift their shape. Among our authors are Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, Ibsen, Beckett, Susan Glaspell, and August Wilson.

This course will examine punk rock as a musical style and as a vehicle for cultural opposition. We will investigate the musical, cultural, and political conditions that gave birth to the genre in the 1970s and trace its continuing evolution through the early 2000s—in dialogue with and opposition to other musical genres, such as progressive rock, heavy metal, ska, and reggae. We will begin with the influence of minimalism on “proto-punk” artists like the Velvet Underground and Patti Smith, which will provide a foundation for seeing how minimalism—as well as modernism, atonality, and electronic music—continue to resonate in punk and rock music. We will examine the intellectual background of early UK punk, with readings by Guy Debord and the Situationist International, and look at the theories of Gramsci and Foucault on the question of institutional power structures and the possibility of resistance to them. To deepen our understanding of punk style and the culture of opposition, there will also be readings by Theodor Adorno, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Antonin Artaud, William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Julia Kristeva, and others. We will trace the splintering of punk into various sub-genres and the challenges of negotiating the music industry while remaining “authentic” in a commercialized culture. Another major focus will be the Riot Grrrl bands of the 1990s as a catalyst for third-wave feminism. Given the DIY aesthetic at the heart of punk and in addition to listening to, analyzing, and reading about the music, students who want to incorporate creative work will be given the opportunity to work with musicians and write some punk songs. In light of the abundant documentary film footage relating to punk culture, the course will include a film viewing every other week.

The perceiving mind is an incarnated mind. —Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1964

Sensory perception is a vital component of the creation and experience of artistic works of all types. In psychology and neuroscience, the investigation of sensory systems has been foundational for our developing understanding of brains, minds, and bodies. Recent work in brain science has moved us beyond the Aristotelian notion of five discrete senses to a view of the senses as more various and interconnected—with each other and with the fundamental psychological processes of perception, attention, emotion, memory, imagination, and judgment. What we call “taste” is a multisensory construction of “flavor” that relies heavily on smell, vision, and touch (mouth feel); “vision” refers to a set of semi-independent streams that specialize in the processing of color, object identity, or spatial layout and movement; “touch” encompasses a complex system of responses to different types of contact with the largest sensory organ—the skin; and “hearing” includes aspects of perception that are thought to be quintessentially human—music and language. Many other sensations are not covered by the standard five: the sense of balance, of body position (proprioception), feelings of pain arising from within the body, and feelings of heat or cold. Perceptual psychologists have suggested that the total count is closer to 17 than five. We will investigate all of these senses, their interactions with each other and their intimate relationships with human emotion, memory, and imagination. Some of the questions that we will address are: Why are smells such potent memory triggers? What can visual art tell us about how the brain works, and vice versa? Why is a caregiver’s touch so vital for psychological development? Why do foods that taste sublime to some people evoke feelings of disgust in others? Do humans have a poor sense of smell? Why does the word “feeling” refer to both bodily sensations and emotions? What makes a song “catchy” or “sticky”? Can humans learn to echolocate like bats? What is the role of body perception in mindfulness meditation? This is a good course for artists who like to think about science and for scientists with a feeling for art. This is a collaborative course, with small-group meetings held weekly in addition to the individual conference meetings held every other week. The main small-group collaborative activity is a sensory lab in which students will have the opportunity to explore their own sensory perceptions in a systematic way, investigating how they relate to language, memory, and emotion. Other group activities include mindful movement and other meditation practices for stress relief and emotional regulation, as well as occasional museum visits if these can be done safely.

The creative process is paradoxical. It involves freedom and spontaneity yet requires expertise and hard work. The creative process is self-expressive yet tends to unfold most easily when the creator forgets about self. The creative process brings joy yet is fraught with fear, frustration, and even terror.The creative process is its own reward yet depends on social support and encouragement. In this class, we look at how various thinkers conceptualize the creative process—chiefly in the arts but in other domains, as well. We see how various psychological theorists describe the process, its source, its motivation, its roots in a particular domain or skill, its cultural context, and its developmental history in the life of the individual. Among the thinkers that we will consider are Freud, Jung, Arnheim, Franklin, and Gardner. Different theorists emphasize different aspects of the process. In particular, we see how some thinkers emphasize persistent work and expert knowledge as essential features, while others emphasize the need for the psychic freedom to “let it happen” and speculate on what emerges when the creative person “lets go.” Still others identify cultural context or biological factors as critical. To concretize theoretical approaches, we look at how various ideas can contribute to understanding specific creative people and their work. In particular, we will consider works written by or about Picasso, Woolf, Welty, Darwin, and some contemporary artists and writers. Though creativity is most frequently explored in individuals, we also consider group improvisation in music and theatre. Some past conference projects have involved interviewing people engaged in creative work. Others consisted of library studies centering on the life and work of a particular creative person. And some students chose to do fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center and focus on an aspect of creative activity in young children.

Using US-based artist Sarah Sze’s remark, “Great protests are great art works,” as its inspiration, this seminar explores the relationship between art, collective ideas, and social change within the context of social movements. We begin by discussing the relationship between aesthetics and the social sciences, focusing on a sociological notion of art as a collective and inherently social process. Our study includes the work of social theorists Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Theodor Adorno, whose works not only illuminate how public culture communicates collective ideas but also how the latter is imbricated with existing power structures and social hierarchies. These critical frameworks will help us investigate the modern art world, exploring how artistic institutions and movements are sites that both perpetuate and resist authoritative ideologies. In the second half of the semester, students will use these frameworks to explore the role of culture and art within collective social movements. We will investigate several questions, including: What defines a social movement and what social conditions produce social movements? How are art and aesthetics used within social movements to communicate ideas and strengthen communities? In what ways do movements deploy art as a form of social resistance or authority? Our discussions will particularly attend to grassroots movements within historically marginalized communities. Throughout the semester, students will also learn about the benefits of visual methodologies and how social scholars use them to understand collective culture and social change. For conference, students will select a specific social movement, exploring how art is deployed within the movement for collective resistance or control. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) critical analysis of an artistic institution, comparative analysis of how different contexts of resistance deploy shared artistic mediums, or the use of art within a given movement over time. While class discussions will primarily focus on the United States, students are also invited to explore the relationship between art and social movements in other social locations.

How are bodies produced in the contemporary world? To what degree are our bodies truly our own? Using Michel Foucault’s term “biopower” and his related work as its point of departure, this course will address the above questions as well as others related to the body in order to analyze and better understand how modern social institutions and relations regulate and attempt to control our bodies. Our examination and analysis will include the various modalities through which power is enacted at the macro level—including, for example, state surveillance, violence, and policy formation. We will also explore the relation between such forces and micro-level, everyday experiences throughout, deploying the concept of “embodiment” to understand how social power not only acts upon us but also becomes internalized within our very beings. This framework will help us better understand how social power is carried through the body and shapes our physicality, as well as the ways in which we move through the social world and interact with each other. Our analysis will enable us to examine biopower more critically with respect to constructions and interpretations of sex/gender, race, class, and sexuality at multiple social scales. For conference, students are expected to select a social context of their preference through which to examine the relationship between biopolitical forces and the embodied experiences of the individual(s). Students might also explore strategies of resistance—both individual and collective—to establish bodily autonomy and resist domination. In addition to social scientific studies, students may deploy ethnographic research, media analysis, and/or turn to personal (auto)biographies as bases of their research and analysis.

Using US-based artist Sarah Sze’s remark, “Great protests are great art works,” as its inspiration, this seminar explores the relationship between art, collective ideas, and social change within the context of social movements. We begin by discussing the relationship between aesthetics and the social sciences, focusing on a sociological notion of art as a collective and inherently social process. Our study includes the work of social theorists Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Theodor Adorno, whose works not only illuminate how public culture communicates collective ideas but also how the latter is imbricated with existing power structures and social hierarchies. These critical frameworks will help us investigate the modern art world, exploring how artistic institutions and movements are sites that both perpetuate and resist authoritative ideologies. In the second half of the semester, students will use these frameworks to explore the role of culture and art within collective social movements. We will investigate several questions, including: What defines a social movement and what social conditions produce social movements? How are art and aesthetics used within social movements to communicate ideas and strengthen communities? In what ways do movements deploy art as a form of social resistance or authority? Our discussions will particularly attend to grassroots movements within historically marginalized communities. Throughout the semester, students will also learn about the benefits of visual methodologies and how social scholars use them to understand collective culture and social change. For conference, students will select a specific social movement, exploring how art is deployed within the movement for collective resistance or control. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) critical analysis of an artistic institution, comparative analysis of how different contexts of resistance deploy shared artistic mediums, or the use of art within a given movement over time. While class discussions will primarily focus on the United States, students are also invited to explore the relationship between art and social movements in other social locations.

This course is intended for seniors interested in pursuing their own art-making practice more deeply and for a prolonged period of time. Students will maintain their own studio spaces and will be expected to work independently and creatively and to challenge themselves and their peers to explore new ways of thinking and making. The course will incorporate prompts that encourage students to make art across disciplines and will culminate in a solo gallery exhibition during the spring semester, accompanied by a printed book that documents the exhibition. We will have regular critiques with visiting artists and our faculty, discuss readings and myriad artists, take trips to galleries and artist’s studios, and participate in the Visual Arts Lecture Series. Your art-making practice will be supplemented with other aspects of presenting your work—writing an artist statement, writing exhibition proposals, interviewing artists, and documenting your art—along with a series of professional-practices workshops. This is an immersive studio course meant for disciplined art students interested in making work in an interdisciplinary environment. 

This class is open to all students of any experience level, including those currently enrolled in a creative arts FYS, and serves as an introduction to fundamental areas of the visual arts, including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography, collage, and related mixed-media processes. We’ll discuss these mediums through image presentations, videos, and a gallery/museum visit. Students will then make art in each of those areas via open-ended prompts, experimenting with new materials, processes, techniques, and ideas. Materials will be provided, and you’ll be encouraged to discover through play. Emphasis will focus on developing your creative imagination and building visual literacy. This class culminates in an end-of-semester exhibition.

In this experimental studio class, we will explore how to digest, appropriate, reconfigure, and rewrite popular media using mostly, but not limited to, painting, drawing, and collage and open to video, animation, sculpture, and performance. We will examine how artists operate as consumers, catalysts, motors, and destroyers of TV, film, music, social media, and advertisement. Slideshows, readings, and presentations will exemplify the tight relationship between art and popular media throughout history and contemporary art and will serve as inspiration for students to create their own works. Students will be encouraged to deconstruct their own spectacles of adoration and critique and celebrate images that are impactful to them. We will promote generative group conversations, studio time, experimentation, collaboration, creativity, and improvisation.

Experiment and explore contemporary performance art. Through surveying a range of important artworks and movements, we will review the histories, concepts, and practices of performance art. Born from anti-art, performance art challenges the boundaries of artistic expression through implementing as material the concepts of space, time, and the body. Examples of artists that we will review are John Cage, Joan Jonas, Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Pope.L, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Janine Antoni, Suzanne Lacy, Aki Sasamoto, and Anna Halprin, to name a few. Reviewing dialogues and movements introducing performance art—such as sculpture, installation art, protest art, social media, video art, happenings, dada, comedy, sound art, graphic notation, scores, collaboration, and movement—students will be able to relate the form and function of performance art through research, workshopping ideas, experimentation, improvisation, and movement, thereby developing the ability to confidently implement any method of the performance-art genre.

Since the early 20th century, artists have explored performance art as a radical means of expression. In both form and function, performance pushes the boundaries of contemporary art. Artists use the medium for institutional critique, social activism, and to address the personal politics of gender, sexuality, and race. This course approaches performance art as a porous, transdisciplinary medium open to students from all disciplines, including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture, video, filmmaking, theatre, dance, music, creative writing, and digital art. Students learn about the legacy of performance art from the 1970s to the present and explore some of the concepts and aesthetic strategies used to create works of performance. Through texts, artists’ writings, video screenings, and slide lectures, students are introduced to a range of performance-based artists and art movements.

This is a course for creative writers who are interested in exploring nonfiction as an art form. We will focus on reading and interpreting outside work—essays, articles, and journalism by some of our best writers—in order to understand what good nonfiction is and how it is created. During the first part of the semester, writing will be comprised mostly of exercises and short pieces aimed at putting into practice what is being illuminated in the readings; in the second half of the semester, students will create longer, formal essays to be presented in workshop.