DANC 388 Before Utterance

1.5 credits 33.75 hours
300 level undergraduate course

This course researches commonalities between pre-semiotic compositional methods of contemporary dance and poetry. Students will begin by looking towards multiple artists in each field and exploring their particular methods of making. As the class considers what initiates designing a conceptual work, students will attempt to find parallels between how and why a work is made. Through this encounter of disciplines, the course poses the following questions: What are the intuitive senses that startle each artist into a channel of expressive form? What do these disciplines share in relationship to time, space, and matter? By experimenting with speed/acceleration, imagery, metaphor, the body, sensation, or the flip-flopping of tenses - recognizable tools that cross between dance and poetry become visible. These experiments will make it possible to view poetry and dance as matching models, despite (or rather because of) the distinction each form makes between how written language and embodiment function as modes of utterance. Ultimately, each student will create a comprehensive practice that will lead to the development of a final project.

Priority enrollment to majors in the School of Dance.
Requires completion of 45 credits.
This course is not repeatable for credit.