TAPS 361P/161P Dance and the Politics of Movement (Dylan Sherman)

This new seminar took as its focus the politics of movement-based-performance. We used foundational and new texts in dance studies to trace when and how gestures and the dancing body become politicized.

As supporting field work, students were charged with creating a “Framing Performance” mini performance. Identifying quotidian gestures from the world, which they then re-performed, students embodied the process of curating and politicizing movement. As the pandemic pushed everything to online, what were to have been live performances became instead 3-minute iPhone videos posted to the class Canvas site. The purpose of these assignments was to identify off-stage bodily performances and to negotiate what it takes to materialize those bodies on stage and for video capture in a way that commented on the original manifestation, but also sustained itself as a strong statement.