Dance Curriculum
The Dance concentration of the Lang Arts major is for students who wish to study dance within the context of a liberal arts education. Many courses in the dance curriculum are suitable for students with any degree of previous experience, and the participation of non-majors is encouraged.
The curriculum of the dance program is structured around four focus areas:
Movement Practice
Rather than using the familiar term "technique," the dance program uses "movement practice" for its dance classes to signal an ongoing approach to physical exploration as opposed to a linear path towards "mastery." With an opportunity to study movement practices ranging from ballet to contact improvisation to vogue, students consider diverse understandings of the body and virtuosity. Engaging in dynamic studio work, students and faculty ask "what can a body do?"
Choreographic Research
Lang's "choreographic research" courses offer students an opportunity to explore varied approaches to the creative process as conceived and employed by some of the field's most adventurous contemporary practitioners. These courses frame dance-making as a series of investigatory acts, an arena for research and discovery. Students work individually and collaboratively as choreographers and learn methods to describe, analyze, and critique each other's movement studies.
History and Theory
Lang dance students engage in a range of academic seminars, analyzing dance through a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches and honing their skills as readers and writers. Working closely with faculty and peers (including students who are majoring in music, visual arts, and theater, as well as a range of other disciplines) students think critically about the body and consider the opportunities and challenges that come with analyzing movement. In addition to considering dance in relation to other art forms, students learn to situate dance within a broader social and cultural context.
Repertory
Each semester, students have the opportunity to work with guest artists in an intensive rehearsal process, presenting a re-staged or new dance in a public performance. Residencies often include a study of the influences that have affected the guest artist's life and work. Recent guest artists have included Luciana Achugar, Ori Flomin, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Juliette Mapp, and representatives from the Forsythe Company and the Trisha Brown Dance Company. In a new institutional partnership, each year one repertory work is created by an Artist-in-Residence from Movement Research, a New York-based professional organization that serves as a laboratory for experimentation in movement-based performance work.
CONCENTRATING IN DANCE
The Dance concentration within the Arts major requires courses in the four focus areas listed above, distributed as follows:
- Aesthetics: ULEC 2320: Aesthetics, or another designated course in aesthetics
- Three Integrative Arts courses:identified by subject code LINA (this was LAIC before Fall 2010)
- First Year Advising Seminar in Dance
- Movement Improvisation: A Way of Knowing (Fall 2011
- Two Choreographic Research courses
- Choreographic Research Introduction
- Choreographic Research Continued
- Foundations in Dance Studies
- One Dance History course
- Dance History: From Ritual to Romanticism
- Dance History: Petipa to Postmodernism
- Movement Practice Courses totaling 10 credits (currently 2-credit and 1-credit courses are offered)
- Moving with Somatics Introduction (required)
- Moving with Somatics Continued
- Modern Dance Practices
- Ballet Practices Introduction (required)
- Ballet Practices Continued
- West African Dance Practices
- Urban Dance Practices
- Contact Improvisation Practices
- Repertory Courses (at least three from the choices below)
- Repertory A
- Repertory B
- Movement Research Repertory
- Dance Residencies
- Dance Elective Course(s) totaling four credits (sample courses listed below)
- Vogue'ology
- I Have A Dream: Dance in Education
- Lang at Judson Church
- Dance History (a second course, in addition to major requirement)
- Politics of Improvisation
- Debates in Performance Studies
- Ephemeral Art
- Performance/Phenomenon
- Practical Side of Performance
- Arts Media Toolkit
- Experiential Anatomy (offered once every two years)
- Music and the Body (offered once every two years)
- Senior Capstone chosen from:
- Senior Seminar
- Individual independent project
ARTS IN CONTEXT
Students interested in studying dance may also choose the Arts in Context concentration, where they combine the study of dance with any liberal arts discipline. For example, students can study dance criticism and journalism by taking courses through Literary Studies and Writing, while other majors and minors (such as Psychology, Urban Studies, and Social Inquiry) also provide wider contexts for dance studies. See the Arts in Context pages for further information about this option.
MINORING IN DANCE
Students majoring in a different program at Lang College my choose the Dance minor, which requires:
- Two Lang InterArts courses (designated as LINA) OR One InterArts course and ULEC 2320: Aesthestics
- Three liberal arts courses satisfying the dance concentration (minimum of 10 credits)
- Three Movement Practice and/or Choreographic Research courses
Students must receive grades of C or higher in all courses taken to meet the requirements for a major or minor in The Arts.
Please note: Students are advised to refer to the current applicable program catalog for degree completion requirements and to confirm their progress in satisfying those requirements with their advisors.
Please note: Students are advised to refer to the current applicable program catalog for degree completion requirements and to confirm their progress in satisfying those requirements with their advisors.
