DANC250

Dance History invites students into creative and critical engagement with history and historiography by examining dance and performance topics and theories. This course encourages students to research aesthetic and conceptual lineage and influence in concert and commercial dance forms in the United States by considering contemporary and historic choreographies and dance artists. In researching various histories of modern, jazz, street styles, ballet, and indigenous forms, students will gain insight into a multitude of embodied expressions in africanist, europeanist, and indigenous traditions. Students will be asked to engage their curiosity and question the role that dance history plays in developing collective and individual creativity and ingenuity, as well as in resisting and/or reifying notions of power, hierarchy, and privilege in contemporary societies. Course content will include regular reading, writing, personal reflection, viewing assignments, and presentations.