Time Schedule:
Catherine Cabeen
BISIA 374
Bothell Campus
Explores how art is made in specified areas of inquiry, genre, or media. Arts may include visual, written, or performance arts, or a combination of these.
Class description
This intensive course will explore how gender identity and expression manifest in physical postures, movement qualities, relationships, costumes and dress codes. The class will examine how these elements of gender representation were/are established, used, and questioned by select 20th and 21st century choreographers. Then, through participatory movement investigations, the class will connect these ideas to how the students themselves experience their own bodies and gender. By comparing the gender expressions in contemporary dance to how we live in our bodies on a daily basis, we will contextualize both as potential ground for political action.
Student learning goals
-To make students aware of their own movement preferences and habits
-To examine these preferences and habits through a historic gendered framework,defining and questioning essentialism and anti-essentialism
-To make connections between the course participants experience of their bodies and the movement vocabularies of select 20th and 21st century choreographers.
-To contextualize both contemporary dance and feminist theory as evolutions of thought that support embodied political action as an everyday practice.
-To empower individuals to embrace the complexity of their own gender identity and invite them to live more consciously in their bodies and movement choices.
General method of instruction
participatory movement exercises, and lecture demonstrations
Recommended preparation
-This workshop is open to students of all levels of dance experience and non-dancers, who are interested in how gender identity and gender representation interact within the individual, in his or her community, and in society at large.
Class assignments and grading
Grades will be based on in class participation and written assignments: 20% In-class Participation- willingness to experiment with physical activities and participation in class discussions 30% Three movement compositions created during class time (10% each) 10% 250-word response paper 40% 1000-word final reflection paper
Grades are based on a willingness to experiment with physical activities and participation in class discussions. Written and compositional assignments will be graded based on their consideration of the material presented in class.
