Dance Composition 4 (2 Credits) DAA 3615 Tuesday/Thursday 12:50 –2:20 Monday UnShowings (variable times and dates, please see schedule in this document). INSTRUCTOR: Nita Little 352-273-0522 Offices: Nadine McGuire Theatre & Dance Pavilion 2nd floor Office Hours: TBA (posted on dance board or faculty offices) SoTD Office Phone: 352-273-0500 Main Office *Email Policy: Use ONLY your UFL.EDU email account for e-mail correspondence related to class. Please include your name & class in the subject line or within the body of all correspondence. Syllabi are posted at CFA website under: Student & Parents: http://arts.ufl.edu/syllabi/ *Please note, this syllabus is under review and will be changed. Course Description: “Dance lives at the point at which reflection and embodiment meet, at which doing and anticipation are intertwined.” (Randy Martin as quoted in Butterworth and Wildschutt: 3) This is the terminal composition course for dance majors. While continuing to engage with student’s enquiry into the choreographic process, we will think of dance composition as a research practice that speaks to a broad range of artistic and cultural issues. As research, we understand and anticipate that the processes of choreography, while requiring craft, are activities of discovery, uncertainty, and inquiry. We will reflect on our work as we analyze its relationship to a number of subjects proposed by our text and by our own insights made evident through our rehearsal processes. Our primary goal is the construction and production of each dance major’s final project, yet this work will be done within a context that places choreographers’ work in dialogue with an expanded conception of contemporary dance as it is practiced around the world within unique contexts and through particularities of modality, process and application. As dancers change in their conditioning and possibility, western choreographers are also changing. They have moved away from an interest in discovery of what is essentially human, a modernist concern, to a post modern dismantlement of clean lines and set forms, the fracturing of cultural idealism. This has developed into an interest in finding and making difference which effects the composition of dance companies, dancers, their skills, and the form, content, methodologies and concern of dances and dance making. To keep up with these exciting times, this class will knit theory with practice. Choreographers will analyze the relationship between their devising practices, their rehearsal culture, and their aesthetic results. Through our reading we will see that often our methodologies fall within a historically cultural trajectory as well as within a changing dance aesthetic. Our purpose is to help unique choreographers locate themself within a larger discourse so that they can adequately determine, speak to, and with, their developing artistic voices. Choreographers will learn to clarify not only the artistic message or concept that they choose to make, but also to ensure that their choreographic practices are congruent with those messages. They will gain empirical insight into themselves as artists, ultimately giving themselves greater choice. Through readings in our text, Contemporary Choreography: A Critical Reader, choreographers will be introduced to a broad range of compositional and choreographic practices and concerns. A compilation of essays by artist/theorists from around the world, this text addresses contemporary issues of choreography beyond the mainstream. Each essay uniquely defines an area of choreographic concern that expands and interrogates new theories of dance making. It is through these essays that our discussions and actions will gain practical and critical perspective of a global scale. Course Objectives: We have multiple objectives. Our foremost is the development and performance of a final composition project. After being adjudicated, some projects will be performed in the Spring Dance Showcase. Class showings will include sectional demonstrations, design, music, and/or other collaborative materials, and scores. Choreographers will practice verbally defining their work in these showings. Rehearsals will be the responsibility of the choreographer, as will all aspects of the final performance including design and production. Our goal is for choreographers to grasp the breadth of choreographic responsibilities including the development of initial concepts and the articulation of an integrated aesthetic, managing rehearsal culture, taking directorial responsibility for content, guide collaborative processes, and effectively master scheduling, technological materials, scoring, and production. We are in training for professional practice. Our second concern is with contextualizing student’s works within an international discourse on contemporary dance’s changing aesthetics, dance as intercultural and community based, it’s political overtones, and other conceptual and philosophical considerations that impact its content as well as how it is devised, constructed and performed. This will give dancers conceptual language and a breadth of knowledge through which to be able to write and speak of their own work. A third objective is the development of strong choreographic voices that can speak and write about work that is still in development. Evaluation and feedback will help students place their work into the multiple discourses we will be studying. We will encourage clarity in one another’s creative logic as we analyze the process of feedback and encourage a community engagement of mutual support. We will invite difference. A fourth objective is for students to gain an understanding of their future possibilities. To this end, we will consider how dance as art happens, its venues, modalities, and its purposes. Students will locate themselves within these frames or will develop new ones. Each student will be encouraged to discover their cutting edge as an artist and be able to locate themselves on a map of their own making. Structure: Meeting twice weekly, this course will roughly have three areas of on-going engagement: With our projects, including discussion and showings; with our texts, involving pertinent weekly reading and discussion; and with a variety of subjects often explored physically, and designed to help students understand a broad reach of choreographic topics and practices pertinent to their forward progress as dance makers. Students should come prepared to move and ready to write. Teaching Philosophy: I teach composition with the belief that each person is an artist. I define art making as experiential philosophy in practice. It is political, not merely functioning within culture, but constructive of it. It is a great responsibility to be an artist. My job, as a teacher, is to make this responsibility imminently clear to my students and help them grasp the reins by which they are able to create the culture they choose to live. This responsibility acts on every level of the art making process, not merely in its product. The work of becoming a choreographer is the development of skills and knowledge through practice and, in this 21st century, through a relationship with an on-going global discourse. My work is to empower students’ discovery of what is possible. Requirements: • Assignments: • Project showings will be ongoing throughout the quarter. Project showing schedule will be determined as class progresses. Be prepared to show sectional work weekly. • Projects in process will also be performed for the Monday UnShowings. All composition students are required to attend all UnShowings. Performance and Event Dates Dates/times subject to change – please check dance bulletin board and/or contact appropriate box office. You will receive a voucher (coupon) at the beginning of the semester for assigned SoTD productions with instructions of how to use it to get discount tickets. Viewing of SoTD plays is highly recommended, but not required. Non-majors, please verify event schedule with instructor, as you may not be required for attendance at all events. Faculty & BFA Spring Dance Showcase Auditions, Thursday, January 8, G-6, 6:30-8:30 UnShowing Organizational Meeting, January 12, 6:30, G6 UnShowing #1, January 26, 6:30-8:30, G6 UnShowing #2, February 9, 6:30-8:30, G-6 UnShowing #3, March 23, 6:30-8:30, G-6 UnShowing #4, March 30, 6:30-finish Adjudication, G-6 UnShowing #5, April 6, 6:30-9:30 Designer Showing, G-6 BFA Fall Dance Showcase, April 16-19, McGuire Studio Theatre G-6 Community In Motion Concert April 18 matinee McGuire Studio Theatre G-6 Dance 2015, March 13-20, Constans Theatre (Final) UnShowing #6, April 20 6:30-8:30, G-6 • Blogs are to be maintained for each class. (i.e. Your blog can mention that you left a comment on another student’s blog). Blogging is conversational but significantly is to be informing, evaluative, and contain the questions you are asking and issues you may be tackling in your project rehearsals. Informal in style, blogs may contain personal viewpoints or experiences. However, they also need to contain some relationship to our work, the reading, the viewing, and the creative and aesthetic theories and ideas expressed in class. Blog notes should be 100 - 150 words. Comments can be two to three sentences. Content of blogs will be discussed in each class. *Note: this entry on blogs is 118 words. • Weekly readings and viewinG will be due and discussed. Our text, Contemporary Choreography will be read in sections. Each student will read one chapter from a section and be responsible for giving a synopsis of its primary points to the other students. Through this method, the book will be made available to all, although no one person will read the full text. Written demonstration of reading will be expected to be in evidence on your blog. Other reading will be requested but provided via handouts. These will be selections derived from the suggested reading list. • Writing and ScorinG assignments are specific to your project and your personal track as an artist. Three assignments will be essays and another will be your project score.