Spring

Though we often imagine a divide between the physical practice of dance training and the intellectual practice of dance history and theorization, in reality they overlap: movement training is embodied research and a form of intellectual labor, while dance theorization and scholarship is deeply connected to the physicality of thought. This course offers an introduction to dance with an integrated approach to thinking and doing. Students will explore a range of embodied research methodologies that draw from improvisational forms, codified techniques, and social and cultural dance practices. No prior dance experience is required for this hybrid seminar/ studio course.

This studio-based course with a seminar component offers an overview of the formal practices and contemporary trends that shape dance as an art form. The class is designed for students who seek to gain a working knowledge of dance and deepen their physical skills. A range of contemporary dance forms and practices will be covered. Topics may include modern dance, hip hop, partnering techniques, social dance forms, improvisation, somatic practices, dance composition, and more. Lectures, viewings, and discussion will support experiential practice components. No previous experience with dance or performance is required. This course meets the general education requirement in the arts.

This course offers an introduction to a number of significant dramatic works and seminal figures in the theorization of theater and performance. But the course's aspirations go much further: we will be concentrating upon the intersection of interpretation and enactment, asking how these pieces appear on stage and why. This will not be merely descriptive work, but crucially it will be interpretive and physical work. Students will prepare and present applied interpretations-that is, interpretations that enable conceptual insights to take artistic form. Throughout, we will be searching for that elusive combination of philological rigor, theoretical sophistication, and creative inspiration-probing the theoretical stakes of creativity and testing the creative implications of analytic insights.

This course introduces fundamental concepts of performance in the theater with emphasis on the development of creative faculties and techniques of observation, as well as vocal and physical interpretation. Concepts are introduced through directed reading, improvisation, and scene study.

This course introduces students to a range of theatrical concepts and techniques, including script analysis and its application to staging, design and acting. Throughout, we investigate how theater – as a collaborative art form – tells stories. Students will act, direct, and design. In doing so, they will gain an understanding of a variety of processes by which scripts are realized in the theater, with an emphasis on the text’s role in production rather than as literature.

What makes a performance unforgettable? How do fleeting acts—onstage, online, or in the streets—spark curiosity, provoke debate, or ripple through memes and memories? In this course, we’ll immerse ourselves in the bold, hybrid world of performance as a tool for upending expectations and crafting the unexpected.

With hands-on projects, critical reflection, and collaborative exploration, we will investigate performance in its many forms, from physical spaces where people move, connect, and gather, to digital platforms where swipes, clicks, and streams define interaction. Together, we’ll uncover how performers outwit algorithms, engineer surprise, and amplify their work in resourceful and unpredictable ways. Visiting artists from theater, media art, and tactical performance will join the course throughout the quarter, bringing unique practices and perspectives into the mix.

Perhaps the most important American play dealing with the prospect of the end of the world is Thorton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth (1942). This class will use this strange and remarkable play that moves through human and geological time to explore contemporary concerns about the end of life as we know it. Our work will culminate in a site-specific performance piece making use of the skills, talents, and experience of the members of the group.

This course explores projected imagery as a medium to paint ephemeral ideas in the real world through installation and theatrical design. Utilizing visual iconography, architectural forms, objects, and cinema, this course will explore the practical and theoretical applications of video on unorthodox objects and spaces. Using software as an instrument, students will investigate the visceral extents of images both historical and generative to create living light. The course will culminate in student presentations that illustrate and illuminate the ideas and techniques presented throughout the course.

“Love and Song: Underexamined Affairs” will take some less traveled paths on the otherwise well-traveled ground whereon song has long been married to love. We will begin with the courtly Provencal love song cultivated by Petrarchans in late medieval and early modern Europe as foundational to amorous tropes for suffering lyrically. From there we will quickly move to lyric in the age of capitalism, technology, and contemporary geopolitics, considering (among others): Nancy J. Vickers’s writings on Petrarch in the video decade, James Baldwin’s theory of love, music, and “the beat”; Martin Stokes’s work on intimate Turkish publics; Dafni Tragaki’s writings on atmospheres and the postpolitical in Greek popular song and rebetiko; Kara Keeling’s theories about love, errantry, and the refrain; and my own work on the unsentimental, together with other writings that tie love song to citizenship, abjection, madness, and histrionics. In addition to the writers named above, we will read from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Lauren Berlant, John Freccero, Josh Kun, Roland Barthes, Alain Badiou, Fred Moten, Elizabeth Povinelli, David Hesmondhalgh, and Eric Lott. We will also build our own collective shared archive of love songs complementing our readings and listenings.

This seminar is open to graduate students from all disciplines. Students will write final seminar papers of circa 15-20 pp., drawing on their own skills and interests relevant to the seminar.

This course investigates what we mean by "performance practice as research", as well as the related formulations practice as research, arts-based research, arts-led research, performance as research, etc. It will primarily, though not entirely, take the form of a seminar, with the expectation that studio work will follow in companion components of the TAPS PhD program and/or other venues. This course is intended for doctoral students seeking to understand and develop the relationship (and non-relationship) between arts practice and academic research without insisting on a particular approach or outcome. Through readings, case studies, discussions, and small artistic experiments, students will puzzle through their own idiosyncratic constellations of methods and interests, and so gain clarity about expansive and not always obviously intersecting bodies of work. While the course is designed for TAPS PhD students, other graduate students who find this mode of performance-based inquiry relevant to their work are welcome to apply. Please contact the instructor for further information.