STDA 282 Major Artists: George Balanchine and Martha Graham

Division of Liberal Arts

3 credits 45.0 hours
200 level undergraduate course

George Balanchine and Martha Graham changed the face of American Dance in the 20th Century. Each pioneered a dance lexicon and stage aesthetic that would impact the language of the theater in Europe and beyond. Both these great American artists, from scratch, founded a school, a style, a company, and a repertory of international significance. The paradox is they seem to be poles apart, in language and in aesthetics. Balanchine was Russian-trained, and never completely jettisoned his classical antecedents, while Graham, first under dance pioneer Ruth St. Dennis, and then on her own, redefined dance in a more radical way, establishing an entirely new technique of movement, contraction and release. Thus, in a sense, the vocabularies of Graham and Balanchine were polarized. But, a closer study will reveal that these two shapers of dance in the 20th Century had a number of similarities, suggesting their shared kinship as Americans, as dancers, and as innovators. This course will look at George Balanchine and Martha Graham, historically, aesthetically, and technically. It will consider experimentalism as an American context with broader implications. We will look at two artists, each with a unique and towering achievement, each of whose dance aesthetics was the creation of a single mind, whose independent vision gave a new language to the structure of dance design in the 20th Century.

Prerequisites FYWT*101 or FYWT*112

This course is not repeatable for credit.
This course can fulfill a liberal arts elective or free elective requirement.