Dance and Music: Our Shared Time Context

 

Professor: Maria Simpson and Daniel Joseph Hyde

 

Course Number: DAN 251

CRN Number: 10424

Class cap: 12

Credits: 3

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon    Fri   1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Fisher Performing Arts Center THORNE STU

 

Distributional Area:

PA  Practicing Arts   

 

Crosslists: Music

In this course dancers and musicians unite to investigate the age-old collaboration between Dance and Music, finding their connection in the abstract environment of Time. The goal here is to illuminate Time as a shared path to increasing artistic behavior in training, performance, and creation. Film study, cross-analysis of artforms, dialogue, and collaborative experimentation lead to communal fluency in use and perception of “Time”, expanding expressive and collaborative potentials. Dancers learn to see movement in music. Musicians begin to hear music in the dance. This course will include solo composition, reflective writing assignments, live experimentation in one’s own technique, and a final collaborative project. Dancers and musicians should be experienced students in their craft, with at least an intermediate level of technical skill and an ability to generate short compositions in their respective field.  Keyboard, percussion, and string instruments preferred. Space for 6 dancers and 6 musicians. 3 credits. Please direct questions to Daniel Hyde at: dhyde@bard.edu

 

Dancing Migrations: Tracing Mexico's Points of Access and Departure

 

Professor: Yebel Gallegos  

 

Course Number: DAN 360

CRN Number: 10428

Class cap: 15

Credits: 4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Fisher Performing Arts Center CONFERENCE

 

Distributional Area:

AA  Analysis of Art   

 

Crosslists:

Latin American/Iberian Studies

Human migration has been a constant force shaping history. In many ways, human movement has created opportunities for culture to evolve and thrive. Together, we will examine how dance as a resilient art form has adapted and transformed due to migration and cross-cultural exchanges. This course moves away from a traditional Euro-U.S.-centric approach to dance history and explores ritual and concert dance from a Mexican perspective. Offered as a seminar-style course, readings by Diana Taylor, Gloria Anzaldúa, Elizabeth Schwall, and David Delgado Shorter, among others, combined with discussions, movement explorations, and visits by guest speakers will deepen our knowledge and understanding of dance as a global art form. There will be weekly writing, a mid-term project proposal, and a final project.

 

Dance Technique Courses:

Intensive technique studies are essential to a serious dance student’s training. Intending and current dance majors must register for two credits of dance technique each semester of their four years at Bard.

 

Introductory Dance Courses:

Classes in different movement genres intended for the beginner; no previous dance experience necessary. Open to all students. New students with previous dance experience should speak with the dance professors before registration.

 

Beginning Ballet I

 

Professor: Yebel Gallegos  

 

Course Number: DAN 104B

CRN Number: 10417

Class cap: 25

Credits: 1

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     3:10 PM - 4:30 PM Fisher Performing Arts Center THORNE STU

 

Distributional Area:

PA  Practicing Arts   

 

 

This course is an introduction to ballet technique. It is primarily a movement-based course with brief lectures and discussion sessions that will address a variety of dance-related subjects such as music, basic anatomy, and observing live dance performances. Experience is not necessary to enroll.

 

Introduction to Hip Hop

 

Professor: Dedrick Gray  

 

Course Number: DAN 104H DG

CRN Number: 10419

Class cap: 25

Credits: 1

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Campus Center MPR

 

Distributional Area:

PA  Practicing Arts   

 

 

This course is an introduction to the studio practice of hip-hop dance. Students will learn to execute and name hip-hop groove techniques and styles within social dances, as well as apply these elements to freestyle. 

 

Introduction to Modern Dance

 

Professor: DD Dorvillier and Walter Dundervill 

 

Course Number: DAN 104M VA

CRN Number: 10418

Class cap: 25

Credits: 1

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Fisher Performing Arts Center THORNE STU

 

Distributional Area:

PA  Practicing Arts   

 

 

Open to all levels of experience, this course will draw on a variety of practices employed by DD Dorvillier and Walter Dundervill in their shared and individual creative dancing processes. We will use music, touch, writing, objects, and the room as resources to enrich our dancing. The first six classes led by Dorvillier, will be an opportunity to discover elements of Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) tapping into the imagination while developing balance, fluidity, and a sense of multi-directionality in body organization and space, as well as Touch Move Talk Write (TMTW) which centers artistic exploration and discovery through timed practices of these four elements. In the classes led by Dundervill, internal listening and sensing will be further honed as the class embodies the microstructures of a fungal organism exploring unique ways of inhabiting inner and outer worlds. Authentic Movement, where participants follow their own movement impulses, will be practiced throughout the semester, acting as a bridge between the two approaches. For more information please contact: Tara Lorenzen, tlorenzen@bard.edu 

 

Intermediate and Advanced Dance Technique:

Intensive technique studies are essential to a serious dance student’s training. Intending and current dance majors must register for two credits of dance technique each semester.   Also open to non-majors with experience, inclination, and permission of the instructor. 

 

Intermediate Contemporary West African Dance

 

Professor: Souleymane Badolo  

 

Course Number: DAN 212A SB

CRN Number: 10676

Class cap: 25

Credits: 1

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     8:30 AM - 9:50 AM Fisher Performing Arts Center THORNE STU

 

Distributional Area:

PA  Practicing Arts   

 

 

Rooted in contemporary African Dance, using Badolo's own movement style, this course explores movement over/under/inside and outside the tradition. The class begins with a warm-up that involves both physical and mental preparation. By listening to internal rhythms of the body and the beat of the music, dancers can discover their own musicality and their own movement language. Students will be exposed to the skills of improvisation starting with simple forms.

 

Intermediate Ballet

 

Professor: Maria Simpson  

 

Course Number: DAN 212B MS

CRN Number: 10422

Class cap: 20

Credits: 1

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Fisher Performing Arts Center THORNE STU

 

Distributional Area:

PA  Practicing Arts   

 

 

This class is intended for students who have a strong foundation in ballet, seeking to expand their technical knowledge, as well as more seasoned dancers who are interested in refining their craft. We prioritize movement efficiency, supported by the understanding that our bodies have an innate capacity for balance. Learning to not interfere with that natural organization is a large part of the work we do. Barre focuses on weight shifting, kinesthetic awareness, and developing a dynamic relationship with music so that we can easily transition into big, luscious waltzes and momentum-based jumps in the center. 

 

Intermediate Advanced Modern Dance

 

Professor: Tara Lorenzen  

 

Course Number: DAN 216 TL

CRN Number: 10423

Class cap: 20

Credits: 1

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Fisher Performing Arts Center THORNE STU

 

Distributional Area:

PA  Practicing Arts   

 

 

“The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion, the steadfast and willing devotion to the labor that makes the classwork not a gymnastic hour and a half, or at the lowest level, a daily drudgery, but a devotion that allows the classroom discipline to become moments of dancing too...” — Merce Cunningham. By studying the Merce Cunningham technique, we will explore the virtuosity of the body in relation to time and space. This class is intended for individuals who are interested in exploring rigorous dancing within a structured foundation. Must have taken at least one semester of an upper level (Intermediate or Advanced) dance course. For more information contact: tlorenzen@bard.edu

 

Dance Composition

 

Dance Composition I

 

Professor: Souleymane Badolo  

 

Course Number: DAN 118

CRN Number: 10420

Class cap: 15

Credits: 3

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Fisher Performing Arts Center THORNE STU

 

Distributional Area:

PA  Practicing Arts   

 

 

Students will be guided, through improvisation exercises, to explore movement vocabulary outside of their normal sphere of experience in order to cultivate a personal “voice.”  This will lead to each student increasing the repertory of choices for movement meaning-making. Fundamental questions of how to consider space and rhythm as choreographic tools will represent a large portion of the class content. There will be multiple creative projects and writing assignments in the course.

 

Dance Composition III

 

Professor: Maria Simpson  

 

Course Number: DAN 318

CRN Number: 10425

Class cap: 15

Credits: 3

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Fisher Performing Arts Center THORNE STU

 

Distributional Area:

PA  Practicing Arts   

 

 

Dance Comp III is designed for students who have completed Dance Comp I, II. In this class students will synthesize the tools developed so far and apply them in different creative contexts. Emphasis will be placed on the consideration of the shape of content – the idea that the content of a dance is only as good as its shape. Short movement studies and 3 larger projects will be the core of the creative work in the course, enhanced by relevant readings and films of well-known artists’ dances.  All Comp students will be required to attend Dance Workshop and participate as part of the production team for one of the dance concerts held during the semester.

 

Dance Workshop

 

Professor: Tara Lorenzen  

 

Course Number: DAN WKSHP

CRN Number: 10429

Class cap: 25

Credits: 1

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue      6:15 PM - 8:00 PM Fisher Performing Arts Center THORNE STU

 

Distributional Area:

PA  Practicing Arts   

 

 

Dance Workshop is a once-weekly evening workshop during which undergraduates are invited to present work in progress for critical feedback from faculty and peers. This is not a movement class taught by a single instructor but a non-hierarchical community gathering at which everyone participates in discussions and constructive conversation about dance and dance-making. All students enrolled in dance composition are required to attend. There may be assigned readings and short writing assignments.

 

Dance Repertory – For a Permanent Dance

 

Professor: DD Dorvillier and Walter Dundervill 

 

Course Number: DAN 316 VA

CRN Number: 10426

Class cap: 10

Credits: 3

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    3:10 PM - 4:30 PM Fisher Performing Arts Center THORNE STU

 

Distributional Area:

PA  Practicing Arts   

 

 

In this course, students will work on the development of an original choreographic project in preparation for the 2024 Faculty Concert, a public performance in the Luma Theater at the end of April. For a Permanent Dance will be an adaptation of fragments of Dorvillier’s Danza Permanente, tailor made for the participants of this course. It will be a collaboration between dancer/choreographers DD Dorvillier and Walter Dundervill with students of the course, alongside guest interventions by Composer Zeena Parkins. Please come ready and willing to dance, think, listen, and play with musicality in new and unexpected ways. The choreography of Danza Permanente comes from “String Quartet #15 Opus 132 in A minor” by Ludwig Van Beethoven. The score is transposed into movement for dancers. Performers rigorously embody the written musical structure, behaviors, and dynamics of the string quartet over time, and through space. The dancers behave as sound, in the silence. Open to students who have taken at least one Intermediate level dance technique course.  Students must be available for all spacing, dress rehearsals, and costume fittings.  For more information please contact: Tara Lorenzen, tlorenzen@bard.edu Students must be available for all spacing, dress rehearsals, and costume fittings.  For more information please contact: Tara Lorenzen, tlorenzen@bard.edu

 

Dance Repertory- Black Dance in America; From the Culture to the Stage

 

Professor: Dedrick Gray  

 

Course Number: DAN 316 DG

CRN Number: 10427

Class cap: 10

Credits: 3

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    4:40 PM - 6:00 PM Fisher Performing Arts Center THORNE STU

 

Distributional Area:

PA  Practicing Arts   

 

 

In this course, students will work on the development of a choreographic project in preparation for the 2024 Faculty Concert, a public performance in the Luma Theater at the end of April. This process oriented class will explore Black Diasporic cultural dance practices through compositional structures, movement development techniques, and improvisation. Students will be encouraged to collaborate in all elements of the choreography and must be available for costume fittings, spacing/dress rehearsals, and performances outside of the regularly scheduled class times.  Prerequisites: Audition, Thursday, December 14th from 6:30-7:30pm in Thorne Studio, Fisher Center. Must have successfully completed either Intro to Hip Hop, Intro to West African or have prior training in either genre.