Making Dances in the Digital Age is an introduction to dance-on-screen as art, as activism—specifically as an expression and document of the movement of Black Lives Matter—and as popular culture. We will explore and analyze dances on a variety of digital platforms—TikTok, Instagram, You Tube and Vimeo—including video documentation of live performances. We will learn and apply movement compositional tools toward the unique creative possibilities offered by digital mediums, exploring dance film, as well as considering sound, location, lighting, costume, and more in the process of creating our own dances for the screen. This is primarily a movement-based class drawing on Yoga, and postmodern dance techniques and improvisation.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2021, Fall 2020.

Dancing is a fundamental human activity, a mode of communication, and a basic force in social life. Investigates dance and movement in the studio and classroom as aesthetic and cultural phenomena. Explores how dance and movement activities reveal information about cultural norms and values and affect perspectives in our own and other societies. Using ethnographic methods, focuses on how dancing maintains and creates conceptions of one’s own body, gender relationships, and personal and community identities. Experiments with dance and movement forms from different cultures and epochs -- for example, the hula, New England contradance, classical Indian dance, Balkan kolos, ballet, contact improvisation, and African American dance forms from swing to hip-hop -- through readings, performances, workshops in the studio, and field work. (Same as: GSWS 1102)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2022.

An introduction to the practice and art form of dance improvisation. Warm-ups and structures enhance student creative expression, range of movement, and body awareness. Various forms are introduced such as Contact Improvisation—a partnering dance form—Authentic Movement, and the improvisational methods and strategies of specific contemporary dance artists. Includes reading, writing, discussion, and, when possible, attendance at live improvisation performances and work with visiting professional artists. No previous dance experience is required.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2021.

This studio-based course is designed for students will limited or no previous experience in hip-hop dances. Students work on technique, improvisation, and dance invention, as well as developing an understanding of hip hop culture and history through supplemental readings and videos. Students may generate original movement and learn set material from the instructor to create an original group piece to perform in an end of semester dance performance. Attendance at all classes, rehearsals, and performances is required. May be repeated for credit.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023.

For millennia, we have organized our fictions, our religions, our histories, and our own lives as narratives. However much the narrative form has been called into question in recent years, it seems we just cannot stop telling each other stories. Examines the particular nexus between narrative and performance: What is narrative? How does it work? What are its limits and its limitations? How do we communicate narrative in performance? Involves both critical inquiry and the creation of performance pieces based in text, dance, movement, and the visual image. (Same as: THTR 1203)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2021.

This studio-based course is designed for students with little or no previous modern dance experience. Students work on technique, improvisation, and dance invention, as well as developing an overview of twentieth-century American modern and postmodern dance through watching and discussing videos and live performances. Students generate original movement and learn set material from the instructor to create an original group piece to perform in an end of semester dance performance. Attendance at all classes, rehearsals, and performances is required. May be repeated for credit.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2020.

From the folkloric dance forms to popular and secular dance practices, this course journeys through various islands and countries of the Caribbean to learn about their various histories and cultures, including the music, costumes, and basic rhythms associated with each particular dance form. This in-studio course provides a general introduction to some of the sacred and popular dances of the Caribbean. Although movement is the primary work of this course, what we learn in class may be supplemented by readings and outside research. *Please note that no prior experience or training is required. Grading will not be based on technical skill levels, but on mindful, full-bodied participation that demonstrates comprehension and articulation of course materials. (Same as: AFRS 1213)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2021.

Introduction to the language, theory, and practice of theater and dance technology. Students explore the history of theater technology with experiential projects in Bowdoin's performance venues, including Pickard and Wish Theaters as well as visits and workshops from guest artists. Topics include lighting, scenography, costuming, and sound, among others. The course considers the possibilities, demands, and limits inherent to different forms of performance and space. Lab required. Course fulfills the Technical Production (THTR/DANC 1750) requirement for Performance Arts major. (Same as: THTR 1301)

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2020.

An introduction to theatrical design that stimulates students to consider the world of a play, dance, or performance piece from a designer’s perspective. Through projects, readings, discussion, and critiques, explores the fundamental principles of visual design as they apply to set, lighting, and costume design, as well as text analysis for the designer and the process of collaboration. Strong emphasis on perceptual, analytical, and communication skills. (Same as: THTR 1302)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2020.

Students will explore different phases of the creative process that involve drama and music for the stage. We will study and compare recent productions of operas, musicals, and other theatrical and dance performances. Now that theaters, opera venues, and concert halls are closed, this course will serve as a reminder of the vibrant collaborative work between artists and the connections they establish with their audiences. We will discuss the different areas of design, such as scenography, costume, lighting, sound, and projection, and we will analyze in a cohesive way how they relate to the music score. We will engage with a variety of genres covering a wide time span, and we will analyze in-depth specific works, such as Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, and Robert Lepage’s staging for Peter Gabriel’s The Secret World Tour. (Same as: MUS 1304, THTR 1304)

Previous terms offered: Spring 2021.

Studio work accompanies video viewings and readings on twentieth-century modern dance and ballet. Focuses on the cultural politics of dance performance -- vocabularies and notions of representation, intention, and authorship -- and changing ideas of the performance space. Viewing and reading moves chronologically, while studio work addresses global themes such as dance and identity, expressionism, self-reference, and the natural. No previous dance experience is required.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2022, Spring 2022.

This course is a continuation of principles explored in DANC 1104 Improvisation, with the addition of techniques and skills for dancing in physical contact. Emphasis is on the partnering duet form, contact improvisation: rolling, how to fall and land softly, how to give and receive weight, how to move with an awareness of sensation. The class is studio focused and will include readings, in-class discussions and watching live and recorded dancing.

Prerequisites: DANC 1101 or DANC 1102 (same as GSWS 1102) or DANC 1104 or DANC 1211 or DANC 1212.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2022, Spring 2022.

Musical theater is a popular performance form that challenges students to work in multiple disciplines, combining dance, acting, music, and design. This course will give students with experience in acting, singing, and dancing an opportunity to hone their skills together through the performance of songs and scenes from a variety of musical theater styles. Students will do projects in ballad singing, choral numbers, group dances, and acting the song. Actors, singers, choreographers, and musicians will be encouraged to work together in class and in evening rehearsals toward a public performance and a cabaret performance at the end of the semester. Performances will be grounded in historical readings and research that contextualizes the origins of the pieces being performed. (Same as: THTR 2205, MUS 2605)

Prerequisites: THTR 1100 - 1799 or DANC 1100 - 1799.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2022.

Intermediate-level dance technique class. Students are expected to have prior training and/or have received full credit in Modern I. Classes progress through warm-up, center work and phrases across-the-floor. Concepts will be further illuminated through choreographic combinations. Emphasis is placed on musicality, and imagery and breath to stimulate and open energetic pathways in relation to alignment, mobility, and expression. Students will learn how to work individually and move together as a group. Additional work in improvisation and somatics/anatomy may be included.

Prerequisites: DANC 1211.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023.

Builds on the beginning level performances in DANC 1212: Modern I: Repertory and Performance. This course deepens students' work in creative process, rehearsal and performance through the creation of original choreography for the Department Dance Concert. Students will be provided with a clearly defined grading rubric as well as course goals and expectations. Students may be involved in generating movement material as well as engaging in improvisational structures for performance. The course may also feature guest artists and opportunities for student choreography. In semesters when both Dance 2211 and 2212 are offered, it is recommended that students enroll in both simultaneously, but this is not required.

Prerequisites: DANC 1212.

A continuation of modern dance principles introduced in Dance 1211 with the addition of African-derived dance movement. The two dance aesthetics are combined to create a new form. Technique classes include center floor exercises, movement combinations across the floor, and movement phrases. Students also attend dance performances in the community. (Same as: AFRS 2236, LACL 2396)

Previous terms offered: Spring 2021.

As technology has evolved, so has the world of theater and dance. Offers students an in-depth look at the technology, theory, and aesthetics involved in lighting design choices for theater and dance productions. Students explore the latest software and technology used by lighting designers, while learning to make their own artistic choices for contemporary performance. Assignments include creating lighting plots for specific scenes and performance events. By the end of the semester, students have reimagined and developed their own original lighting designs for a play or dance project to be presented in class. (Same as: THTR 2303)

Prerequisites: THTR 1000 - 1999.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2024.

Puppetry, the animation of inanimate objects in performance, is typically considered a ‘small’ art form yet it has a sprawling historical, cultural, and aesthetic reach. Venerable theater historian George Speaight highlights puppetry’s ubiquitous presence when he says, “Puppet shows seem to have existed in almost all civilizations and in almost all periods . . . It has everywhere antedated written drama and, indeed, writing of any kind. It represents one of the most primitive instincts of the human race.” An introduction to puppetry, this course integrates the practical modes of design, construction, and performance with an examination of theories of origin, historical context, and global cultural significance. Through studio projects, individual and group performance, critiques, discussion, readings, video viewing, and research presentations, students will consider, create, and manipulate a variety of puppetry styles including object theater, shadow puppetry, hand puppets, bunraku-type puppets, and rod puppets while exploring what puppetry is, where it came from, its role in the history of western theater, as well as its cultural significance in Asia, Indonesia, Africa, India, and the Middle East. (Same as: THTR 2304)

Prerequisites: THTR 1302 (same as DANC 1302).

Previous terms offered: Spring 2022.

This class is an advanced scenic design course for theater and dance in which we study how to conceptualize space and other visual elements on stage. By analyzing scripts, physical movement, or other sources of motivation and narratives, the course explores visual research from an array of different sources like artistic styles, painting, photography in different places and time periods, and how to translate this information into specific scenic environments or devices. Students will explore visual vocabulary of drawing, sketching, rendering, drafting, scale, and principles of applied theater mechanisms and techniques. We examine how scenography relates to other design areas, such as lighting, costume, sound, puppetry, and the embodied storytelling experience on stage, as well as the challenges of artistic collaboration, collective and personal visual impact, and sustainability. (Same as: THTR 2308)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2022.

Using a range of improvisatory techniques and structures, experienced dancers excavate movement sources and improve the range, subtlety, and responsiveness of their dancing. Detailed work on personal movement vocabulary, musicality, and the use of multidimensional space leads to a strong sense of choreographic architecture. Students explore the play between design and accident—communication and open-ended meaning—and irony and gravity. Studio work is supported by readings on dance and its relationship to other art forms.

Prerequisites: DANC 1000 or higher.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2021.

This course examines hip-hop culture's vast array of expressive practices. Focusing primarily on hip-hop dance practices, our study will situate these dances within a larger hip-hop culture, acknowledging hip-hop as both inherently African diasporic and specific to the particular US historical, cultural, and sociopolitical contexts in which—and the communities from whom—these practices emerge. Exploring aesthetics and/as cultural values, we will pay particular attention to the roles of power and inequity, interrogating themes that may include racism, anti-Blackness, white supremacy, globalization, appropriation, community, joy, and agency. We will examine our own positionalities, asking what it can mean to engage responsibly in hip-hop as well as what it can mean to be responsible to the communities of folks who created and continue to create hip-hop culture. Primarily a reading-, writing-, and discussion-based course, our study will be supplemented with physical practice in the studio. (Same as: AFRS 2290, MUS 2298)

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023.

What is the role of the body in protest? How does the state unequally choreograph peoples’ right to move freely? How can we embody resistance? This course interrogates the infinite ways people and communities have resisted, refused, and cultivated alternatives to oppressive structures and systems. Utilizing the term choreography to refer to the ways bodies move through space, this course examines examples of political dance performances, as well as the worldmaking that can take place as folx dance together; however, it also considers gestures such as “hands up, don’t shoot” and the mass occupation of public spaces during uprisings. The course explores themes including white supremacy, colonization, heteropatriarchy, state violence and policing, anti-Blackness, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, racism, and capitalism. Primarily a reading-, writing-, and discussion-based course, our study will be supplemented with physical practice in the studio to draw on embodied experiences.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2023.

This class deepens students’ work in creative process, rehearsal, and performance through explorations of Africanist and hip-hop aesthetics and cultural approaches. Students will advance their understandings of and skills in hip-hop dance practices, including further development of critical listening skills and musical embodiment. Students may be involved in learning and generating movement material as well as engaging in freestyle and improvisatory practices. This course culminates in a performance, and all students must be available for any technical and dress rehearsals as well as performances.

Prerequisites: DANC 1105 or DANC 2000 - 2969 or DANC 3000 or higher.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2024.

Dance—an art form whose medium is the body—and ethnography—the study of people and their cultures—are great tools for addressing some of the ways different dancing bodies have been historically policed for “dancing sex(y).” Other tools, such as critical dance and black theories, in addition to queer and feminist approaches, will also be utilized to comprehend the uneven ways these bodies are further racialized, sexualized, and gendered within the Americas. In particular, students will learn about various dances (such as the Brazilian samba to the Cuban rumba, Jamaican Dancehall, and the Trinidadian wine) through readings, lectures, and actual in-studio dancing. Ultimately, the intention here is to understand dancing as both a meaning-making activity and a way of understanding the world. In turn, it is an important lens for critically thinking, talking, researching, and writing about politics of identity (especially regarding nationality, gender, race, and sexuality). (Same as: AFRS 2292, GSWS 2505, LACL 2392)

Previous terms offered: Spring 2021.

An introduction to dance as a meaning-making, cultural practice. Using embodiment/performance, writing, and discussion, students will use the gestures embedded within dance cultures as critical tools necessary for analyzing and theorizing aspects of race, sexuality, gender, and nationalism. Accordingly, students will understand the meanings and roles of dance and gesture within larger historical, cultural, social, and theatrical contexts. In sum, this class examines dance forms and dancing bodies, such as Indian classical dance, Puerto Rican bomba, and blackface minstrelsy, to better understand how cultures throughout the globe come to know and understand both themselves and the world at large. (Same as: AFRS 2238)

Prerequisites: DANC 1000 or higher or THTR 1000 or higher or AFRS 1000 or higher or GSWS 1000 or higher or ANTH 1000 or higher.

Investigates the history and practice of one of the few truly American art forms: the musical theater. From its beginnings, influenced by opera, minstrelsy, and popular music, to the current Broadway landscape, which grapples with post-pandemic performance, the American musical has provided fascinating insights into the values, ideas, and mores of the society that created it. Special attention will be paid to the Black creators, women writers, and artists of color whose work has shaped the genre but who have remained under-acknowledged by past generations of both academic and popular historians. Students will encounter well-loved Broadway smash hits as well as forgotten off-Broadway gems while being encouraged to develop a deeper, more nuanced love for the genre. (Same as: THTR 2509)

Movement, Breath, and Healing draws upon improvisational dance, yoga, meditation and mindfulness techniques, and embodied anatomy—forms that offer potential for individual and collective empowerment and transformation through cultivating self-awareness, connection and wholeness, community, resilience, and joy. Revolving around a regular dance and movement practice, students will apply a feminist intersectional lens to their embodied practices, examining how power dynamics in the field of professional dance and the multibillion-dollar wellness industry in the West center some and marginalize and exclude others based on race, dis/ability, size, sexuality, gender, and class. Students will be exposed to the choreography and practices of artists working within and across spaces of movement, healing and embodied social justice, in the process of developing and cultivating their own choreographic and community/self-care practices that bridge the disciplines of art and healing.

Prerequisites: DANC 2211 or DANC 2212 or DANC 2221 or DANC 2222 or DANC 2241 (same as AFRS 2236 and LAS 2396) or DANC 2242 (same as AFRS 2237) or DANC 2401.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2021.

An advanced level dance technique class. Students are expected to have prior training and/or have received full credit in Modern II. The course is a continuation of the processes of 2211, with more challenging and complex phrase-work and more in-depth physical explorations. In addition, the course will emphasize artistry and performance. Partnering/hands-on work may be included.

Prerequisites: DANC 2000 or higher.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2022, Fall 2021.

Builds on the intermediate-level performances in DANC 2212: Modern II: Repertory and Performance. This course deepens students' work in creative process, rehearsal and performance through the creation of original choreography for the Department Dance Concert. Students may be involved in generating movement material as well as engaging in improvisational structures for performance. The course may also feature guest artists and opportunities for student choreography. It is recommended that students enroll in DANC 3211 (Modern Dance III: Technique) simultaneously, but this is not required.

Prerequisites: DANC 2212.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2021.

How do we cultivate a more flexible, awake, resilient and compassionate body-mind in the age of COVID-19 and a renewed consciousness of the violence of white supremacy? Advanced Dancing for Challenging Times explores how dance and improvisation are forms of an embodied politics, revealing and engaging with a matrix of social-historical conditions and constraints. Through grounded, fluid, weight and momentum-based dancing and improvisational structures and scores, students will explore dance as a “vital technology of the self” (Goldman, I Want to Be Ready), that has potential to create and form new, hitherto unimagined, spaces. A variety of techniques that bring us into a more full-bodied consciousness will be deployed: postmodern and contemporary dance and improvisation, somatics, functional anatomy, and Asian and South Asian wisdom traditions and practices including Yoga asana and pranayama, Qigong, and Buddhist metta practice.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2020.

This course fuses Afro-Diasporan aesthetics and cultural concepts with critical dance studies and US modern/post-modern/contemporary concert dance traditions. Students will engage with various Afro-based dance practitioners (such as Jawole Willa Jo Zollar), cultural praxes (such as Sankofa), and improvisational structures (such as Jamaican Dancehall and Haitian Yanvalou) to deepen their ability to create, rehearse, and perform original choreography, specifically for the purposes of advocating for social change and cross-cultural understanding. Using virtual, archival, digital, embodied, and scholarly research, students will learn about and generate performance material that is deeply connected to the histories, spaces, and places that we remember, take-up, and occupy. Students will also be expected to execute collaborations with each other and those within their communities as they create and perform movement for their final dance projects. (Same as: AFRS 3242, LACL 3342)

Prerequisites: DANC 1213 (same as AFRS 1213) or DANC 2241 (same as AFRS 2236) or DANC 1000 - 2969 or DANC 3000 or higher.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2020.

Experienced student actors, dancers, and musicians collaborate to devise an original performance event. Examines the history of collective creation and the various emphases different artists have brought to that process. Immerses students in the practice of devising, stretching from conception and research to writing, staging, and ultimately performing a finished piece. (Same as: THTR 3401)

Prerequisites: Two of: THTR 1100 - 1999 or DANC 1100 - 1999 and THTR 2000 - 2799 or DANC 2000 - 2799.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2021.

Dancing Place explores the interrelationship between body, place, and imagination to construct experimental choreographies and sound scores. Students will deepen their relationship with the Maine bioregion through site-specific practice and research: by engaging their physicality and senses and expanding their awareness and perception of the more-than-human world. They will move within (and be moved by!) a variety of sites, both on campus and off, including the Schiller Coastal Studies Center and the Cathance River Nature Preserve. They will metabolize and communicate their findings and discoveries in creative process leading to a final choreographic project and accompanying sound design. The course may include the interdisciplinary study of place through visits by local artists and organizations, and guest faculty from across the campus. This course is a Capstone course open to non-majors and minors. (Same as: THTR 3404)

Prerequisites: DANC 2204 - 2299.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023.

An advanced performance-based studio course in which students develop an original project in their chosen performance area: e.g., acting, choreography, dance, design, directing, dramaturgy and criticism, or playwriting, among others. The course meets regularly as a group to critique, discuss, and present their work and may include guest artists and travel to attend productions in Portland and Boston, as available. Projects are presented in a festival format in late November, students are encouraged to collaborate on each other’s projects. Required for all performance arts majors; theater and dance minors and other majors may be admitted by permission of instructor. (Same as: THTR 4040)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2020.