Repertory and Performance: Thank You For Coming
DANC 378
Fall 2014
| Section:
01
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| This course may be repeated for credit. |
As a choreographer I often draw upon physicality that we all use and recognize in social interactions, and I heighten and complicate these movements in a rigorous way. Gestures taken from everyday life, the violent action of a mob, the play of persona on someone's face and body: all of these things form a vocabulary of movement that grounds my work not in the studio or the theater but in the social world we all inhabit. Starting from this common ground, I begin pulling apart the daily performance of self. Building tightly choreographed scores and scenes in close collaboration with my performers, I am interested in their fully-embodied individuality, expressed and communicated in every moment, and my work becomes a densely layered and empathetic mirror of our reality, opening up possibilities for new perspectives, transformations, and ways of being.
In this course I will work with the participants to engage in intensive research on the surrounding themes of my ongoing interdisciplinary performance project, Thank You For Coming. Thank You For Coming is a series of performance and installation works I will be creating over the next several years, which heighten how we experience ourselves in relation to other bodies, other stories, and the spaces we all inhabit. Through this work I am asking: How do we perceive ourselves as participants in the co-creation of our reality, and through performance can we collectively, in some small way, create a new vision of society?
The focus of this class will be intensive research for Thank You For Coming:Play. Play will focus on the ritual of storytelling, forcing it to the forefront of a physically driven dance-play that investigates how we rely on stories to relate to one another and form identities as individuals and as citizens. We will research how narrative functions across multiple perspectives: personal, autobiographical, familial, psychological, neurobiological, mythical, religious and political. In this class we will delve into narrative's complex impact on our human-animal bodies and develop choreographic methods and processes based on this research. This research will feed directly into the work I do with my dance company and eventually Thank You For Coming: Play will be performed by my company nationally and internationally.
This class will be taught in collaboration with various professors. This course is part of the Creative Campus Initiative (http://www.wesleyan.edu/creativecampus). |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA DANC |
| Course Format: Performance | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (DANC-MN)(DANC)(ENVS-MN)(ENVS)(REES-MN)(REES-Lang/Lit/C)(THEA) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Selected readings from:
Anne Carson, GLASS, IRONY AND GOD
Richard Senett, FLESH AND STONE: THE BODY AND THE CITY IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION
Paul John Eakin, LIVING AUTOBIOGRAPHICALLY: HOW WE CREATE IDENTITY IN NARRATIVE
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Examinations and Assignments:
Adventurous embodied and vocal practices, improvisational score work, mapping our own life experiences in nonlinear and non-derivative forms, readings, written responses, and social experiments on campus, group collaboration on the creation of performance score shared in the final class in a open showing. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Permission of Instructor required. Students should email Faye Driscoll at fayedriscoll@gmail.com by September 9 and explain why they are interested in taking the course and what they can contribute to the course, major and class year, and experience with dance. Student will be selected based on class year (juniors and seniors only) as well as their experience with dance and interest in the subject matter.
Meeting Times/Dates:
September 14-15: Class (Sunday 2-5pm; Monday 7-10pm)
September 28-29: Class (Sunday 2-5pm; Monday 7-10pm)
October 5-6: Class (Sunday 2-5pm; Monday 7-10pm)
October 12-13: Class (Sunday 2-5pm; Monday 7-10pm)
October 26-27: Class (Sunday 2-5pm; Monday 7-10pm)
November 2-3: Class and final showing, Monday November 3, 7-10pm |
| Instructor(s): Driscoll,Faye Times: TBA; Location: TBA |
Permission of Instructor Required
Enrollment capacity: 12 | Permission of instructor will be granted during the drop/add period. Students must submit either a ranked or unranked drop/add request for this course. |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 4 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 4 |
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