Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0206 - Contemporary Dance Technique 2: Beginning/Intermediate-HALF COURSE

This course is designed for beginning and intermediate-level dancers. The studio will be our laboratory for a semester-long exploration of contemporary postmodern dance with an emphasis on spherical space, a phrase utilized by Steve Paxton the instigator of Contact Improvisation. Students will engage with this orientation through set choreography and improvisational structures. In motion, we will activate connection between periphery and center, gravity and support, tone and release, self and others. This course is designed to honor the gathering of a group of people for a common purpose. Therefore, it will include partner work in the form of contact improvisation to support individual rigor and collective effervescence. The goal of this course is to support a sustainable and deeply engaged movement practice--one that may inform the development of a lifetime of embodied creative process. Keywords:Dance, somatics, technique, partnering, improvisation

Students should expect to spend 8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time