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This course introduces students to various approaches to studying dance in a humanities context. We will explore how people create meaning through dance and how dance, in turn, shapes social norms, political institutions, and cultural practices across time and space. The course's structure challenges the Western/non-Western binary that still pervades many academic disciplines by comparing dance forms across the globe on the basis of functional similarities. At the same time, we will keep in mind the unequal power hierarchies shaping our modern world, and therefore we will examine how and why certain forms have become delineated as 'Western' and others as 'world' or 'ethnic,' despite similarities in movement, meaning, or purpose.

This course introduces students to dance as an important cultural force in the African Diaspora. From capoeira in Brazil to dance hall in Jamaica to hip hop in the United States and Ghana, we will analyze dance as a form of resistance to slavery, colonialism, and oppression; as an integral component of community formation; and as a practice that shapes racial, gendered, and national identity. We will explore these topics through readings, film viewings, and movement workshops (no previous dance experience required). Students will have the option to do a creative performance as part of their final project.

This project, a new work for 7-9 dancers, investigates dynamic relationships across time and space, with a special interest in movement that folds and unfolds, wraps inward and spools outward. Spatial trajectories and awareness of shifting spatial relationships are central to the work. Imagery will be drawn from natural phenomenon. The movement material is exceptionally lush, dense and detailed, including a lot of rolling floor work, swift changes of direction and level, weight-bearing and carrying, ensemble work and interchangeable partnering. The dance is episodic, irregular in shape. Dancers will join in the process of building material from base phrases. Many rehearsals will be in silence, so dancers will need to be especially alert to the breath phrasing and rhythmic content of the movement material. Indeterminacy procedures will be used to organize the progression and sections of the work. Dancers of all backgrounds welcome; physical assertion and commitment highly valued. Composer Dohi Moon will create an original score for the work; TAPS theater designers will create scenic elements, costumes, lighting. Performance will be on Memorial Auditorium stage. Performance dates: May 26, 27. Dancers are expected to attend all dance rehearsals and technical rehearsals leading to performance. Interested dancers should contact the choreographer by email. nnCasting by both audition and invitation. Once cast, dancers may sign up for unit credit.

Stanford Lecturer and Choreographer Alex Ketley has had a long history working on dance pieces integrating dance for people with and without disability. The politics involved in working with dance and performance as it functions in the realm of disability are very potent. Society has inherent prejudices and fears when it comes to disability, and engaging this directly through the creation of dance pieces is a way to challenge assumptions of who can dance, and what a dancing body can look like. The class will function as a studio class, where dancers with and without disability will learn choreography as well as different improvisational and collaborative strategies towards the goal of the creation of a new dance work. Discussions and reading will also be involved around the topic of how the body, in all its different configurations, lends itself and informs artistic exploration and creation. Any questions can be directed to Lecturer Alex Ketley at aketley@stanford.edu.

Students from diverse dance styles (ballet to hip-hop to contemporary) participate in the dance-making/remix process and collaborate with musicians, visual artists, designers and spoken word artists, to co-create multidisciplinary fully produced production and installation. Open to student artists of different genres, styles, disciplines and levels. By audition and/or discussion with the instructor.

Students who participate in the Chocolate Head-Space will engage in a dance and music activities and collaborative crowd-sourced performance on the Stanford campus. A mobile app using GPS data would be implemented to fellow Chocolate Heads students-- prompting them to engage, perform and collaborate with others in that space. Students( and audiences) would be encouraged to learn a piece (or multiple pieces with friends) and record themselves performing in a different places on campus. No prior experience is required.

In this course, students will be given the opportunity to be part of the development of choreography for the Stanford TAPS Spring production of Evita. They will learn about tango, salsa, musical theater dance and waltz as we construct combinations and pieces that will ultimately go into the show. Auditions for Evita will take place in week 1 of winter, but students enrolled in the course need not be in the cast to participate. On the flipside, students hoping to be cast are strongly encouraged to consider enrolling in the course. No previous dance experience is required.