Dance

This credit-bearing course will consist of a combination of various individual components that can be taken as DNCE 4400 (one credit). For the one-credit Dance Study, each semester students will complete:

• 1-2 components in Movement Practice (i.e., 2-3 class sessions per week) AND
• 1-credit Dance Study students must also attend required program meetings through Dance Meeting (DNCE 5506).
• 1-credit Dance Study students can also participate as a performer in a Live Time-Based Art Work on a co-curricular/noncredit-bearing basis but would not be registering for DNCE 5554 as part of a credit-bearing program of study.

This credit-bearing course will consist of a combination of various individual components that can be taken as DNCE 4400 (three credits). For the three-credit Dance Study, each semester students will complete:

• 1-2 components in Movement Practice (i.e., 2-3 class sessions per week) PLUS either 
  • one component in Creative Study OR
  • one component in Analytical/Theoretical Study.
• 3-credit Dance Study students must also attend required program meetings through Dance Meeting (DNCE 5506), AND complete one tech/production project through Dance Tech/Production (DNCE 5507). 
• 3-credit Dance Study students can also participate as a performer in a Live Time-Based Art Work on a co-curricular/noncredit-bearing basis but would not be registering for DNCE 5554 as part of a credit-bearing program of study.

This credit-bearing course will consist of a combination of various individual components that together constitutes a Dance Program/Third. For the 10-credit, yearlong Dance Third, each semester students will complete:

• 2-3 components in Movement Practice (i.e., 3-4 class sessions per week) PLUS either
  • one component in Creative Study OR
  • one component in Analytical/Theoretical Study.
• Dance Third students must also attend required program meetings through Dance Meeting (DNCE 5506) AND complete one tech/production project through Dance Tech/Production (DNCE 5507). 
• Dance Third students will also be required to participate in performance in a Live Time-Based Art Work (DNCE 5554). Dance Third students who do not want to perform have the option of completing a second Dance Tech/Production assignment OR registering for an additional component course.

This credit-bearing program of study will consist of a combination of various individual component courses that together constitutes a Dance Intensive Program/Two Thirds. For the 20-credit, yearlong Dance Two Thirds, students will complete each semester:

• 2-4 components in Movement Practice (i.e., 4-5 class sessions per week) PLUS
  • 1-2 components in Creative Study AND
  • 1-2 components in Analytical/Theoretical Study.
• Dance Two Thirds students must also attend required program meetings through Dance Meeting (DNCE 5506) AND complete one tech/production project through Dance Tech/Production (DNCE 5507). 
• Dance Two Thirds students will also be required to participate in performance of Live Time-Based Art Works (DNCE 5554).

All dance is political, simply because it is created by a human being who is of a particular place and time. Thus, the work is inherently commenting on that particular place and time. Using this framework, we will take a deep dive into American dance history from Reconstruction to today, with an eye on tackling the questions: How did this thing we refer to as “American dance” come to be? Who or what is missing from the canon? Why? How do we place ourselves inside this lineage? With a keen understanding of the state of the world at the point of creation, students will develop a critical eye through which to view performance—the how and the why of creation having equal footing with the physical forms. Further, students will begin to develop an understanding of how contemporary American dance is in constant conversation with dance of the past.

In this course, we will explore varied entry points toward the creation and practice of a personal dance teaching philosophy and pedagogy. We will interrogate our varied and unique histories, values, patterns, cultures, and aesthetic desires, observing how they illuminate or limit our teaching goals. Our experience and assumptions around teaching and being taught will help us amplify and name integral skills and tools that support our work in dance/body/movement-based classrooms. How do we build a class architecture that nurtures growth? How do we create a safe and equitable space for reciprocal learning? How do we find a balance between planning and improvising? How do we clarify and hone our intentions while using clear language and communication? These questions and many more will ignite us to observe, support, and inspire one another, as we imagine new and engaged approaches to our teaching practices.

This course will be an introduction to designing costumes for dance/time-based art. The course will emphasize collaborations with a choreographer and include topics such as: The Creative Process of Design, Where to Begin When Designing for Dance, The Language of Clothes, The Elements of Design, Color Theory, Movement and the Functionality of Dance Costumes, Figure Drawing/Rendering Costumes, and Fabric Dictionary/Fabric Terminology. The course will also involve learning numerous hand and machine stitches, as well as various design-room techniques, such as taking measurements, fitting and altering costumes, and wardrobe maintenance. Each costume-design student will eventually be paired with a student choreographer, with whom they will collaborate to realize costumes for the choreographer’s work that will be presented during the fall or spring departmental dance productions. Students will also be creating their own resource book throughout the year, which will comprise all handouts, in-class exercises, and notes in a loose-leaf binder. The resource book will be a useful reference tool as students work on various class assignments and/or departmental productions. This course is designed to give students a basic knowledge of the many intricate creative and technical steps involved in the design process when creating costumes. A deeper understanding of the various aspects of costume design for dance is an enormous tool that can not only enhance one’s overall design skills but also allow the student to communicate more fully during the creative process—be it with fellow designers or as a choreographer or director collaborating with the production team. The resource book will also serve as a helpful guide in the future, as students embark on their own productions at Sarah Lawrence and beyond.

Light informs how we see the world around us. It sculpts, defines, and obscures. In this course, we will explore the power of light to move, shape, and highlight dance performance. Students will get a hands-on look at how lighting instruments work and how to utilize them in their design work. We will discuss theoretical and practical concepts that will strengthen students’ vocabulary and understanding of how to use light most effectively in their work. 

How is it possible for us to move in the countless ways that we do? In this course, students will learn to develop their X-ray vision of human beings in motion through functional anatomical study that combines movement practice, drawing, lecture, and problem solving. Movement is a powerful vehicle for experiencing in detail our profoundly adaptable musculoskeletal anatomy. We will learn Irene Dowd’s Spirals, a comprehensive warm-up/cool-down for dancing that coordinates all joints and muscles through their fullest range of motion, facilitating study of the entire musculoskeletal system. In addition to movement practice, drawings will be made as part of each week’s lecture (drawing materials provided), and three short assignments will be submitted each semester. Insights and skills developed in this course can provide tremendous inspiration in the process of movement invention and composition.

This course is an opportunity for students who have completed a full year of anatomy study in the dance program to pursue functional anatomy studies in greater depth. In open consultation with the instructor during class meetings, each student will engage in independent research, developing one or more lines of inquiry that utilize functional anatomy perspectives and texts as an organizing framework. Research topics in recent years have included aging and longevity in dance, discussion of functional anatomy in relation to linguistics, pedagogy, choreography and performance, investigation of micropolitics in established dance training techniques, examining connections between movement and emotion, development of a unique warm-up sequence to address specific individual technical issues, and study of kinematics and rehabilitation in knee injury. The class meetings will discuss progress, questions, and methods for reporting, writing, and presenting research, alternating with weekly studio/practice sessions for individual and/or group research consultations.

Whenever we make something, we are improvising—making it up as we go. But imagination and creativity are not random. Artists of all disciplines, indeed, have eureka moments and epiphanies; but those “aha” moments are born of practices that engage experimentation, strategies, observation, and decision-making—supported by states of concentration. Similarly, the notions of “perfect forms” and “free improvisation” are theoretical impossibilities. Nothing is ever totally fixed nor is it ever completely open. No matter what creative endeavor in which we are engaged, we are always in the real world, in a space between the two extremes. In this course, we will make dances in real time with varying degrees and types of determinacy. We will be guided by various concerns and ways of focusing our choices but will be consistently aware that we are composing dance in real time. That will require honing our perceptual skills, as well as our skills of articulation and communication, with our collaborators. Throughout the semester, we will develop our abilities both to build coherent structures that will guide our choice-making and to notice and use the serendipity that chance brings. This component is open to students with prior experience in improvisation and dance-making, as well as to those new to the form.

In this component, a visiting artist or company is invited to create a work with students or to set an existing piece of choreography. The works will be performed for the College community at the end of the semester.

This course is designed as an imaginative laboratory in choreographic practice. It is time and space for rigorous play, where we will engage critically with our own respective creative processes. All class sessions will be devoted to choreographic practice in a mentored laboratory setting. Students will be charged with bringing in choreographic proposals or ideas on which to work with their peers during these sessions. Throughout the course, specific compositional and/or artistic concerns will be highlighted that will frame our investigations. Those concerns will be used to focus our critical analysis on an aspect of our choice rather than as a score that defines the choreographic proposal itself. Much of our work will focus on refining the process of choreographic practice in order to better understand how the processes with which we engage to make work shapes what we make.

In this course, graduates and upper-class undergraduates with a special interest and experience in the creation of time-based art works that include live performance will design and direct individual projects. Students and faculty will meet weekly to view works-in-progress and discuss relevant artistic and practical problems, both in class and in conferences. Attributes of the work across multiple disciplines of artistic endeavor will be discussed as integral and interdependent elements in the work. Participation in mentored, critical-response feedback sessions with peers will be a key aspect of the course. The engagement with the medium of time in live performance, the constraints of presentation of the works, both in works-in-progress and in a shared program of events, and the need to respect the classroom and presentation space of the dance studio will be the constraints imposed on the students’ artistic proposals. Students working within any number of live performance traditions are as welcome in this course as those seeking to transgress orthodox conventions. While all the works will engage in some way with embodied action, student proposals need not neatly fall into a traditional notion of what constitutes dance. The cultivation of open discourse across traditional disciplinary artistic boundaries, both in the process of developing the works and in the context of presentation to the public, is a central goal of the course. The faculty leading this course have roots in dance practice but have also practiced expansive definitions of dance within their own creative work. This course will culminate in performances of the works toward the end of the semester in a shared program with all enrolled students. Performances of the works will take place on campus.

This component will provide students with the opportunity to play a full array of percussion instruments from around the globe: African djembes, Brazilian zurdos, Argentinian bombo, Peruvian cajon and quijada, Indian tabla, traditional traps, and more. Students will also be able to program and execute electronic drums, such as the Wavedrum and Handsonic. The focus will be prevalent toward enhancing a dancer’s full knowledge of music but will expand the vocabulary for choreographers, actors, and composers as well.  The component will grant students the tools needed to fully immerse themselves in the understanding of the relation of music, dance, and the performing arts. Students will expand their knowledge of terminology and execution and be able to learn the basic rudiments of notation. We will analyze the interaction of music from intellectual and cultural points of view. We will learn how to scan musical scores with various degrees of complexity and explore the diverse rhythmic styles that have developed through time and through different geographical and social conditions.  Classes will consist of group playing. All instruments will be provided and available for practice.

In this course, each student will be charged with creating a short choreography using their classmates as a cast. We will think of choreographing or composing these dances as “the action of combining” or “a putting together, connecting, and arranging.”  The course will treat “set” choreography and improvisation as a continuum. We will be dealing with both but will focus on the former—treating improvisation as one of many means of developing choreography, as well as potentially using highly scored improvisation in performance as compositional choice-making in real time.  The course aims to develop tools that can be of use in this endeavor and to develop skills of analysis and articulation in relation to our artistic work. Throughout the semester, students will be asked to think and work critically and analytically about the act of composition and the act of perception. A key component of this course will be discussions about what we experience in the work of our colleagues, as well as what our intentions are within our own choice-making. Classes will be structured around in-class choreographic/improvisational exercises and analysis and discussion in response to choreographic assignments. There will be some homework in creating short choreographic sketches, short readings and viewing of works of art on video and online, and critique and discussion in relationship to those works. The course will strongly embrace interdisciplinary practices. The goal of the class will be to offer a forum through which students can deeply engage with creation, develop their own artistic voices, and investigate new ways of thinking about form through the lens of choreographic inquiry.

In this component, a visiting artist or company is invited to create a work with students or to set an existing piece of choreography. The works will be performed for the College community at the end of the semester.

In this course, graduates and upper-class undergraduates with a special interest and experience in the creation of time-based art works that include live performance will design and direct individual projects. Students and faculty will meet weekly to view works-in-progress and discuss relevant artistic and practical problems, both in class and in conferences. Attributes of the work across multiple disciplines of artistic endeavor will be discussed as integral and interdependent elements in the work. Participation in mentored, critical-response feedback sessions with peers will be a key aspect of the course. The engagement with the medium of time in live performance, the constraints of presentation of the works, both in works-in-progress and in a shared program of events, and the need to respect the classroom and presentation space of the dance studio will be the constraints imposed on the students’ artistic proposals. Students working within any number of live performance traditions are as welcome in this course as those seeking to transgress orthodox conventions. While all the works will engage in some way with embodied action, student proposals need not neatly fall into a traditional notion of what constitutes dance. The cultivation of open discourse across traditional disciplinary artistic boundaries, both in the process of developing the works and in the context of presentation to the public, is a central goal of the course. The faculty leading this course have roots in dance practice but have also practiced expansive definitions of dance within their own creative work. This course will culminate in performances of the works toward the end of the semester in a shared program with all enrolled students. Performances of the works will take place on campus.

This course will be an experimental lab that aims to expose students to a diverse set of current voices and approaches to contemporary dance making.  Each guest artist will lead a module of three-to-seven class sessions. These mini-workshops will introduce students to that artist and their creative process. Guests will present emergent, as well as established, voices and a wide range of approaches to contemporary artistic practice.

Students will be introduced to the Afro-Brazilian art of capoeira, which blends aspects of martial arts, dance, and music. The course will aim to provide the basics of capoeira movements and music while also advancing students’ understanding of their own bodies through conditioning and partner work. Elements of philosophy will also be incorporated to assess what it means to be a martial artist and a capoeirista. Students with or without previous martial arts experience are encouraged to take this course.

Inspired by the groundbreaking work of scholar, activist, and dance pioneer Katherine Dunham, this high-energy, informative course will take students on an immersive journey through notable moments of her life, theories, and signature movements to ultimately draw connections to social, theatrical, commercial, and concert jazz dance styles found today. Through experiential units integrating technique with her research, life story, and the history of American dance and culture, students will explore Dunham’s lasting contributions to film, cabaret, and theatrical concert dance while also cultivating the students’ own performance quality and artistic expression. This joyful course will encourage freedom of expression through musicality, power, and passion regardless of ability, making this course an excellent choice for students who love to dance as well as for non-dancers who love to move and are interested in theatre, film, and culture. This course will include practice in vernacular jazz/swing, theatre, commercial, and studio jazz styles, alongside Dunham’s classic technique that fuses modern, ballet, and African Caribbean folkloric dance. Each session will include a classic Dunham warm-up, a brief lecture, and vibrant Dunham and Dunham-inspired jazz progressions, culminating in a choreographed combination. Come join us!

Elevate your jazz dance technique with power and passion! From cabaret performances to concert stages, Broadway productions, and Hollywood films, Katherine Dunham had a brilliant career shaping the look, style, and formal training of jazz dance. This high-energy course builds upon the Dunham fundamentals introduced in Jazz I (DNCE 5525), refining movement quality and versatility while integrating classical jazz studio technique progressions. Utilizing Dunham’s dynamic expression of dance, theories, and teaching with grace, students will be empowered to find the joy in every step, “tell the story,” and take more risks while developing technical confidence and growth as an artist. That being said, students will find that this class will not only strengthen and train the body but also equip them with resilience and the performance skills needed to captivate audiences with power and passion. Each session will include a classic Dunham warmup, isolations, center and/or barre work, formal studio jazz dance exercises, and vibrant Dunham and Dunham-inspired Jazz progressions, culminating in a choreographed combination. Choreography combinations will be inspired by styles Dunham explored in her shows or influenced through her work, including vernacular jazz/swing, theatre, commercial, and studio Jazz styles in addition to Dunham’s signature technique that fuses modern, ballet, and African Caribbean folkloric dance. Come join us!

This course will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher’s technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change either at the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

This course will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher's technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change at either the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance. 

This course will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher's technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change at either the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

Ballet students will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, emphasizing anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.

Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, emphasizing anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.

This course will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher’s technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change either at the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

This course will emphasize the steady development of movement skills, energy use, strength, and articulation relevant to each teacher's technical and aesthetic orientations. Instructors will change at either the end of each semester or midway through the semester, allowing students to experience present-day dance practice across diverse styles and cultural lineages. At all levels, attention will be given to sharpening each student’s awareness of time and energy and training rhythmically, precisely, and according to sound anatomical principles. Degrees of complexity in movement patterns will vary within the leveled class structure. All students will investigate sensory experience and the various demands of performance.

This course will introduce students to strength, mobility, and physical organization techniques that develop awareness and skill in the moving body. Drawing from Pilates, yoga, and other dance-adjacent practices, students will build a dependable foundation to support their dance and movement practice. Each week, the class will focus on conditioning a specific region of the body, incorporating basic anatomy and joint biomechanics through guided movement investigations. While collective goals will be emphasized, attention is also given to individual body structures and personal movement objectives. Recognizing that every body is unique, students will learn how to work with their own anatomy to create strategies that support their personal movement journeys. Students will be expected to maintain a dedicated method for recording their practice—this might be a journal, sketchbook, or digital log. These records will support the development of personalized movement routines to be used outside of class. Full participation in both the physical and reflective aspects of the course is required. Students should demonstrate a clear understanding and integration of course material throughout the semester. This course is open to all interested movers. As students deepen their understanding of how their bodies move, they expand their potential for creativity, exploration, and play.

This studio practice course will introduce students to hip-hop culture through the classic hip-hop styles of dance. Cumulative technical dance training brings to light the ethos of the street dance culture and how it counteracts and sometimes adopts mainstream media misconceptions. Through the study of classic hip-hop dance styles, students will expand their awareness of connections between various dance forms that pre-date hip-hop while also exploring the dilemma of belonging yet standing apart. Through dialogue, students will begin learning about the history of the original dance styles in their communities and then discuss mainstream factors that helped or harmed the evolution of the community. Occasional guest teachers will offer a class in a club or street style that will help students get a feel for the New York City dance scene of the ’80s, which influenced today’s trends. Students will watch internet footage to aid in understanding the similarities and differences between previous trends and today’s social exchanges in dance. Students will receive dance training at a beginner level done to hip-hop music from past to present. If there are intermediate-level dancers, they will be taught at respective levels in order to make advancements in their grasp of vocabulary.

The Alexander Technique is a system of neuromuscular re-education that enables the student to identify and change poor and inefficient habits that may be causing stress and fatigue. With gentle, hands-on guidance and verbal instruction, the student learns to replace faulty habits with improved coordination by locating and releasing undue muscular tensions. This includes easing of the breath, introducing greater freedom, and optimizing performance in all activities. It is a technique that has proven to be profoundly useful for dancers, musicians, and actors and has been widely acclaimed by leading figures in the performing arts, education, and medicine.

This course will use physical embodiment as a mode of learning about and understanding various West African cultures. In addition to physical practice, supplementary study materials will be used to explore the breadth, diversity, history, and technique of dances found in West Africa. Traditional and social/contemporary dances from countries such as Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast will be explored. Participation in end-of-semester or year-end showings will provide students with the opportunity to apply studies in a performative context.

Ballet students will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, emphasizing anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.

Ballet students at all levels will be guided toward creative and expressive freedom in their dancing, enhancing the qualities of ease, grace, musicality, and symmetry that define this form. We will explore alignment, emphasizing anatomical principles; we will cultivate awareness of how to enlist the appropriate neuromuscular effort for efficient movement; and we will coordinate all aspects of body, mind, and spirit, integrating them harmoniously.

In this course, students will work as performers within works created and directed by graduate and advanced undergraduate students enrolled in Live Time-Based Art (DNCE 7124). Casting sessions to participate as a performer will occur during the first Dance Meeting (DNCE 5506) of each semester. Following the casting session, performers will be placed in casts with individual choreographer/directors, who will create a rehearsal schedule in conjunction with the performers stated availability. Rehearsals to create and prepare the work for performance will take place twice a week for two hours. Rehearsals occur throughout the entirety of the semester, leading to technical rehearsals, dress rehearsals, and finally two public performances of the work occurring on campus at the end of the semester. Additionally, students will be required to attend biweekly showings at an assigned time slot within the Live Time-Based Art (DNCE 7124) course. Five such showings will take place over the course of each semester for each work in development.

Dance Meeting convenes all undergraduate students enrolled in a five-credit Dance Program/Third, a three-credit Dance Study, or a one-credit Dance Study, along with all the MFA in Dance graduate students, in meetings that occur roughly once a month. We gather for a variety of activities that enrich and inform the dance curriculum. In addition to sharing department news and information, Dance Meeting features master classes by guest artists from New York City and beyond, workshops with practitioners in dance-related health fields, panels and presentations by distinguished guests, SLC Dance faculty and alumnae, and casting sessions for departmental performances created by the Live Time-Based Art class.

Each student enrolled in a three-credit Dance Study, five-credit Dance Third, or Dance MFA program of study is REQUIRED to complete one tech/production job each semester in order to receive full credit for dance courses. In completing Dance Tech/Production (DNCE 5507), students are exposed to "behind the scenes" operations required to put on a dance performance. All students do this work, so each student may be performing on stage in one concert and working a crew position in the next. The production process is much the same here at Sarah Lawrence as in the professional world. For each concert, the technical crew works during the performances and during the "tech week" before the show. Each student will receive instruction for every tech job, so students should not worry if they are assigned to do something that they have never done before.

There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarity. —Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is one of the most important thinkers and writers of the 20th century. His many writings and innovative concepts, which continue to be discussed and debated today, are of pressing relevance for the contemporary moment, marked as it is by themes of technological and aesthetic transformations, political violence, and histories of exile and displacement. The purpose of this intensive seminar will be to delve into the textures of Benjamin’s life—from his childhood years in Berlin to his final days in France and Spain—while considering the diverse and intricate formations of Benjamin’s thought and writing. For this inquiry, we will be drawing from a number of biographical, historiographic, political, literary, and anthropological lines of analysis to gain an incisive sense of his groundbreaking writings on film and photography, literature and translation, concepts of history, and the politics of culture. Along the way, we will connect Benjamin’s thought to other significant writers and philosophers, including Charles Baudelaire, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Hannah Arendt, and Jacques Derrida. We will focus on a number of key texts authored by Benjamin, including Berlin Childhood Around 1900, The Arcades Project, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” “The Task of the Translator,” “The Storyteller,” and “On the Concept of History.” In engaging with these and other challenging texts and giving thought to Benjamin’s life and death more generally, students will develop a richly informed understanding of the life and thought of this singularly compelling person while coming to terms with the haunted histories of the 20th and 21st centuries.

When we encounter dancing, what are we seeing, experiencing, and understanding? How do current representations of dance reflect, perpetuate, and/or disrupt familiar assumptions about personal and social realities? Embedded historical ideas and enforcements based on race, economic class, gender, social/sexual orientation, nationality/regional affiliation, and more are threaded through our daily lives. Performing arts inside and outside of popular culture often reinforce dominant cultural ideas and feelings. Can they also propose or inspire alternatives? In fall, we will view samples of dancing in film, video, digital media, television programs, and commercials, as well as live performance. These viewings—along with reading selected texts from the fields of dance and performance, literary criticism, feminist theory, queer theory, and cultural studies—will form the basis of class discussions and exercises. In spring, we will shift focus to viewing still images and live action with readings from additional fields, including art criticism and neuroscience, as well as fine-tuning approaches to writing about our subject matter. Students will complete several class assignments each semester, as well as develop one or more substantial lines of inquiry for conference work. Conference projects may draw upon multiple disciplines, including those within humanities and creative arts. The central aim of this course will be to cultivate informed discussion and to produce new knowledge, increasing both individual and collective capabilities. We will use academic research, along with personal experience, to advance our recognition of dance as an elemental art form and as a potentially important orientation in adjacent studies. In both fall and spring, students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences.

The television show Hoarders: Buried Alive...artist Andy Warhol’s junk collection, consisting of receipts, junk mail, and takeout menus...professional organizer Marie Kondo and her minimalist ideals...big-screen televisions, fast fashion, and floating islands of plastic trash contrasted with the promises of decluttering, downsizing, and shrinking homes. From fantastic depictions of people overwhelmed with their accumulation of things to popular self-help books that promise freedom and joy in the form of a clean home, this course will be concerned with the judgments we make about people and their relationship to their stuff. This course will begin to unpack “abject object orientations” by investigating figures like the archivist, the hoarder, the minimalist, and the collector. The course will ask how race, gender, sexuality, and class shape our judgments of people and their relationship to things. By looking to depictions of whom Scott Herring calls “material deviants” across performance art, film, and memoir, we will describe the cultural logics through which speaking of a person’s orientation toward objects becomes a way of making ethical claims about them. For major assignments, students will develop three total live performances, including two archival “show and tells,” and a final autoethnographic performance unpacking students’ own relationship to things. Archival “show and tells” will center an object from trips to the Sarah Lawrence Archives and can be either solo or group performances. Potential field-trip sites may include the Hudson River Museum, local thrift and resale stores, and the Yonkers Public Library Local History Room. No previous performance experience is required.

The performance of a play is a complex cultural event that involves far more than the literary text upon which it is grounded. First, there is the theatre itself—a building of a certain shape and utility within a certain neighborhood of a certain city. On stage, we have actors and their training, gesture, staging, music, dance, and costumes alongside scenery and lighting. Offstage, we have the audience, its makeup, and its reactions; the people who run the theatre and the reasons why they do it; and finally the social milieu in which the theatre exists. In this course, we will study these elements as a system of signs that convey meaning (semiotics)—a world of meaning whose lifespan is a few hours but whose significances are ageless. The plays of Shakespeare will be our texts. Reconstructing the performances of those plays in the England of Elizabeth I and James I will be our starting place. Seeing how those plays have been approached and re-envisioned over the centuries will be our journey. Tracing their elusive meanings, from within Shakespeare’s Wooden O to their adaptation in contemporary film, will be our work. 

This course, intended for students interested in exploring dance as a restorative act of living, will introduce the existential and social-neurological significance of dance in forming and sustaining human societies and collectively investigate the course inquiry: In the face of suffering and discordance, can we restore hope and connection through dance? Students will learn a diverse map of dance/movement practices categorized by Dance and Suffering, Dance and Joy, and Dance and Community, exploring how dance has historically and culturally shaped interpersonal understanding and community building. Under each theme, the class will share and witness each other’s ancestral and cultural dance/movement rituals through intermodal art making to further expand one’s embodied knowledge of dance as a restorative act of living. No prior dance or arts experiences are required. Occurring at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, this course will bring together students from both Sarah Lawrence and Bedford Hills. 

This intensive drawing course challenges young artists to develop a disciplined, sustainable, and experimental practice that expands how they think, see, and make art. Each week, students will create 50 to 100 small works on paper, based on open-ended prompts designed to disrupt habits and deepen the relationship between subject and process. Students will work quickly and flexibly, experimenting with mediums and approaches to explore multiple solutions to each prompt. Alongside these daily drawings, students will develop a single, ambitious, labor-intensive piece throughout the semester—evolving slowly and reflecting time’s passage in contrast to our in-class exploratory drawings. This dynamic exchange fosters varied creative rhythms, bridging idea generation and final execution. The course will push students to redefine the medium of drawing and, in turn, transform their art-making practice. In fall and spring, students will meet biweekly with the instructor for individual conferences, alongside corequisite First-Year Studies Project (ARTS 1000), which will meet weekly as a group.

This intensive drawing course challenges young artists to develop a disciplined, sustainable, and experimental practice that expands how they think, see, and make art. Each week, students will create 50 to 100 small works on paper, based on open-ended prompts designed to disrupt habits and deepen the relationship between subject and process. We will work quickly and flexibly, experimenting with mediums and approaches to explore multiple solutions to each prompt. Alongside these daily drawings, students will develop a single, ambitious, labor-intensive piece throughout the semester—evolving slowly and reflecting time’s passage in contrast to our in-class exploratory drawings. This dynamic exchange fosters varied creative rhythms, bridging idea generation and final execution. The course will push students to redefine the medium of drawing and, in turn, transform their art-making practice.

An echo, response, and expansion of the fall course, Future-Tense Liquidation I: Collaboration, Speculation, and Archaeologies of the Future (ARTS 3450), this course will invite students and Wartburg residents to bring to life the speculative, intergenerational text developed in fall by animating it through performance. The course will center on the messy, collective act of making through puppetry, movement, sound, installation, and costume. Futures paved over, marked down, seized, sold to the highest bidder...in this course, we open the body and the performance up to possession by the ghosts of those dispossessed futures. Students will work in small groups and in ongoing workshops and dialogue with Wartburg residents to generate the visual, sonic, and material world of the piece: building objects, writing songs, choreographing gestures, and repurposing debris. Emphasis will be placed on collaboration across difference, material experimentation, and the unpredictability of process. Readings and references from fall will remain in rotation, with new material introduced in response to the needs of the developing work. Guest artists in sound, movement, and performance will guide workshops at Wartburg attended and facilitated by SLC students. The course will culminate in a public-performance event, with all its seams, fractures, and ambiguities visible. This course welcomes students in visual art, theatre, performance, music, video, sound, design, dance, writing, or any other interdisciplinary practice.

This course is designed for seniors committed to deepening their art-making practice over an extended period. Students will maintain individual studio spaces and are expected to work independently, creatively, and critically—challenging both themselves and their peers to explore new ways of thinking and making. The course will include prompts that encourage interdisciplinary approaches to art and culminates in a solo gallery exhibition during the spring, accompanied by a printed book documenting the show. Students will engage in regular critiques with visiting artists and faculty; discuss readings and a range of artists; visit galleries and studios; and participate in the Visual Arts Lecture Series, a program of lectures given by prominent contemporary artists and held at Sarah Lawrence College. Beyond studio work, students will develop skills in presenting their work—including writing artist statements and exhibition proposals, interviewing artists, and documenting their art. A series of professional-practice workshops will further prepare students for life beyond college.

This course will be a hands-on, project-based studio that explores special topics in art and technology, including generative art, simulation, interactive narrative, artificial intelligence, interactive sound, and immersive transmediality. Students will be expected to experiment with a wide range of electronic practices and will be guided through the design of individualized reading lists and tutorials based on personal interest. Students should plan on producing two portfolio works of interactive, computational, or artificial-intelligence art and at least one comprehensive, yearlong installation project that expands upon skills, conceptual thinking, and creativity.

Although amateurs often confuse the terms, “abstract video” is a new art form that is very different from the experimental film movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Often drawing from the digital worlds of games, signal processing, 3D modeling, and computational media, abstract video has become an important new aspect of art installation, site-specific sculpture, and gallery presentations. This project course will be an introduction to the use of video as a material for the visual artists. Using open-source software and digital techniques, students will create several small works of video abstraction intended for gallery installation, ambient surrounds, and new-media screens. Artists studied will include Refik Anadol, the Light Surgeons, Ryoji Ikeda, and more.