Courses

Provides advanced dance students with an intensive opportunity to develop as performers in professional level dances. Skills to be honed are: the dancer as contributor to the process of art-making; defining individual technical and expressive gifts; working in a variety of new technical and philosophical dance frameworks. In addition to regular training during the academic terms, participation in a "preseason" rehearsal period before fall term is required. A few pieces of student choreography will be accepted for repertory. The group produces an annual concert, performs in the Twin Cities and makes dance exchanges with other college groups. Recommended Preparation: Admission by audition.

In this class we will look at dance from a global viewpoint, investigating forms, styles and contexts through various lenses (feminist, ethnographic, Africanist). We will examine and broaden the definition of dance and situate it within the discourse of “performance,” recognizing the larger meaning of “performance” to include all bodily movements, acts and gestures, whether onstage or off. We will ask questions about the performance of culture and ethnography, race and gender in the various dance cultures presented. Reading, writing, moving, discussing, and viewing live performance will shape class inquiry. No prior dance experience needed.

This course positions jazz and related social dance styles as forms with African diasporic roots and American branches. Composed of 60% in-class movement investigation and 40% both in-class and out of class reading, viewing, writing, and creating, Jazz Dance: Roots and Grooves will ask students to invest in how the elements of groove, improvisation and interaction unite different approaches to jazz and make it a form that appreciates the past, centers the present and innovates for the future. Some dance experience recommended.

Provides advanced dance students with an intensive opportunity to develop as performers in professional level dances. Skills to be honed are: the dancer as contributor to the process of art-making; defining individual technical and expressive gifts; working in a variety of new technical and philosophical dance frameworks. In addition to regular training during the academic terms, participation in a "preseason" rehearsal period before fall term is required. A few pieces of student choreography will be accepted for repertory. The group produces an annual concert, performs in the Twin Cities and makes dance exchanges with other college groups. Recommended Preparation: Admission by audition.

This course focuses on development and execution of dance and performance skills as they relate to musical theater dance styles. Students will learn how to use dance as a method of storytelling to gain a better understanding of how dance and choreography create and bring dramatic elements to life. This course will also include some beginning tap steps.

Tap is an energetic form of dance that focuses on rhythm and percussion. Classes will include across the floor exercises that teach dynamics, shading, phrasing, and musicality along with extended rhythmic phrases and improvisation exercises. Tap dance originated in the southern United States as a fusion of West African dance roots and Europeanist influences. In this course students will learn tap skills as well as important aspects of tap dance history. Some previous experience with Tap dance is recommended. 

Provides advanced dance students with an intensive opportunity to develop as performers in professional level dances. Skills to be honed are: the dancer as contributor to the process of art-making; defining individual technical and expressive gifts; working in a variety of new technical and philosophical dance frameworks. In addition to regular training during the academic terms, participation in a "preseason" rehearsal period before fall term is required. A few pieces of student choreography will be accepted for repertory. The group produces an annual concert, performs in the Twin Cities and makes dance exchanges with other college groups. Recommended Preparation: Admission by audition.

This course examines the role of theatre in envisioning and enacting social change in the United States. Students will analyze the dramatic texts, live performances, and manifestos of influential theatre artists from the 1960s to today. Throughout the term, students will also practice embodied learning through theatre games, improvisational activities, and devised theatre-making. 

This course builds on the core principles of THEA 110 through scene study, improvisational exercises, and script analysis. Students will practice the techniques of Sanford Meisner, Uta Hagen, and Stella Adler as they deepen their ability to live truthfully in imaginary circumstances. Expected preparation: Theater 110 or significant acting experience. 

Throughout history, theatrical performance has been both a reflection of cultural values and a platform for envisioning social change. In this course, students will examine the theatre of the people: popular theatre, theatre that directly engages with the community in which it lives, and theatre that is woven into the rituals of the culture. This includes ancient Greek tragedy, medieval cycle plays, Yoruban Egungun Masquerade, commedia dell’arte, Japanese Kabuki, Elizabethan theatre, and American popular and grassroots performance. Class sessions will combine lecture, discussion, and performances of historical texts.

This interdisciplinary course, taught in conjunction with a full-scale Carleton Players production, will explore one of Shakespeare’s greatest and most complex works, Twelfth Night. We will investigate the play’s historical, social, and theatrical contexts as we try to understand not only the world that produced the play, but the world that came out of it. How should what we learn of the past inform a modern production? How can performance offer interpretive arguments about the play’s meanings? Mixing embodied and experiential learning, individual and group projects may involve dramaturgy, stagecraft, literary analysis, music, and research in Special Collections.

"Make it new!" was the rallying cry of the modernists, and ever since, the theater has never ceased its efforts to break both aesthetic and social conventions, boundaries, and taboos. Beginning with some of the important precursors of the twentieth century–Artaud, Brecht, and Meyerhold–this course will explore the history and theory of the avant-garde, charting the rise of interdisciplinary “performance." Students will both analyze and perform work written and inspired by these avant-garde artists. 

This interdisciplinary course, taught in conjunction with a full-scale Carleton Players production, will explore one of Shakespeare’s greatest and most complex works, Twelfth Night. We will investigate the play’s historical, social, and theatrical contexts as we try to understand not only the world that produced the play, but the world that came out of it. How should what we learn of the past inform a modern production? How can performance offer interpretive arguments about the play’s meanings? Taken at the 300 level, this course requires a major scholarly or creative term-long project.