Arts Workshops
East Meets West
K40.1050 4 CR W 2:00-4:45 Lanny Harrison
course meets at La Mama etc., 47 Great Jones street.
In this course we will create characters inspired by history, memory, dreams and world lore through challenging exercises that fuse Eastern contemplative traditions and Western theatrical improvisation. Students will learn how to access different aspects of themselves to enhance their own creative process and create a uniquely authentic theatre. Each session will begin with vocal exercises and physical warmups, based on Taoist exercises and Western dance techniques. Our character work starts with meditations and visualizations employing the Buddhist tradition of “mindfulness/awareness” practice, in which we place ourselves totally in the present moment. We will work in solos, duos and groups, gradually adding costumes, props and music. Open to theater students, dancers, musicians, visual artists, writers—all those interested in discovering their own source of deep invention. Readings will include Chögyam Trungpa’s Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior and Dharma Art, and Louise Steinman’s The Knowing Body. [$35 fee]
Native American Traditions and Arts:Coyote’s Vision Quest
K40.1052 4 CR R 6:20-9:00 Franc Menusan
Native Americans have been villainized and romanticized, studied and collected for five hundred years, yet they appear as mysterious and elusive to the modern world as they did to Christopher Columbus. Who are these people who have been the original inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere for over forty thousand years and yet continue to be the most misrepresented and misunderstood Americans? We will compare and contrast the perceptions of Native and Non-Native people and study the effects that they had on one another through sharing our own cultural experiences through our music, art, poetry, and humor. We will learn about the intricate tapestry of American history and culture that we take for granted and perhaps in the process learn more about who we are. Readings include Indian Givers, Jack Weatherford; Custer Died for Your Sins, Vine Deloria, Jr.; Native Science, Gregory Cajete; Sacred Objects and Sacred Places, Andrew Gulliford and Last Standing Woman, La Duke.
The Knowing Body:Awareness Techniques for Performers
K40.1106 4 CR T 6:20-9:00 Robin Powell
course meets at La Mama etc., 47 Great Jones street.
Mind/body awareness techniques increase one’s ability to strip away any physical and mental interferences which often appear as stiff, held muscles, poor body habits and impaired concentration. These methods are vital to the creative process and help students to honor inner knowledge. In this workshop, performance will be viewed in terms of concentration, breath, tension/effort, energy/presence, body behaviors/habits, and mind/body integration. Students will bring in a solo piece and work on it throughout the semester. Kinetic Awareness, the Alexander Technique, meditation, visualization, and energy work will be learned and applied to student’s performance. Students will learn not only how to apply this work to performance but its use in the creation of a piece, in preparation before a performance, and in reducing performance anxiety. Open to performing arts students who wish to deepen their relationship to their bodies, increase awareness, and draw on inner reserves. Readings will include Knaster’s Discovering the Body’s Wisdom, Steinman’s The Knowing Body, Crow’s The Alexander Technique as a Basic Approach to Theatrical Training, and Kohnlein’s Listening from the Physical Body. [$35 fee]
Creative Arts in the Helping and Caring Professions
K40.1115 4 CR R 9:30-12:15 Maria Hodermarska
course meets at La Mama etc., 47 Great Jones street.
This workshop explores the uses of drama, dance, visual arts, music and poetry within the health care professions, serving childhood to geriatric populations. Against a theoretical background of the psychological needs of mentally and physically ill individuals, the creative processes of the arts are experienced as they can humanize, sensitize, ameliorate, and liberate expressive capacities. Activities drawn from each art form are tried out, sometimes blended, and adapted for diverse age groups and needs. The workshop provides substantial background for artists, artist-educators, leisure studies majors, as well as others interested in exploring an ancillary or major career in the arts therapies. Employment possibilities are discussed, as well as professional organizations and registry requirements for further in-depth training. The workshop also includes selected books and visits by working arts therapists. [$35 fee]
Making Dances in the Twenty-first Century: Concepts, Strategies, Actions
K40.1208 4 CR T 3:30-6:10 Leslie Satin
course meets at la mama etc., 47 Great jones Street.
Dance composition is, simply, the process through which an artist selects and organizes movements. Less simply, it encompasses not only the interaction with other art forms but the expression of and resistance to cherished, or at least familiar, personal and cultural beliefs about how the body makes meaning. What is “the body”? What are the relationships of our movements, our experiences, our philosophies, our aesthetic frameworks and choices? In this workshop, we will grapple with these questions in the archive and the studio. We’ll read works by and about twentieth– and twenty-first–century choreographers and make dances that take off from their concepts, strategies, and actions. We’ll welcome students’ explorations of principles outside Western concert tradition; we’ll welcome however they wish to move, however they wish to move us. Readings may include essays by Lawrence Halprin, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Dunn, Elena Alexander, and others. [$35 fee]
Advanced Contemporary Musicianship
K40.1306 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 John Castellano
course meets at Drummer’s Collective, 541 Sixth Avenue (near 14th street).
This course is designed for those who want to make music and have a rudimentary knowledge of music theory. Course work combines a study of contemporary popular music in terms of form, style, and instrumentation, with a review of practical music theory and musicianship skills. Students have the opportunity to apply their skills by performing in class on their own compositions as well as on compositions written by their classmates and the course instructor. In addition, each student undertakes an independent research project focusing on an area or period of popular music in which the student has a particular interest. This course is appropriate for those students interested in furthering their understanding of music in general and contemporary popular music specifically. Access to a keyboard or guitar is recommended. [$35 fee]
Playing Jazz
K40.1316 4 CR T 3:30-6:10 Bill Rayner
course meets at Drummer’s Collective, 541 Sixth Avenue (near 14th street).
This workshop is designed for student musicians with the knowledge and skills of basic musicianship who want to learn to play jazz or extend their present ability to play jazz. Students will learn the fundamentals of improvisation: scale and chord structures, modes, chord progressions, rhythmic applications, song forms and options for organizing an improvisation such as creating a melody out of melodic fragments, scale fragments, and sequences. We will listen to great jazz performers to hear examples of good improvisation, proper phrasing and jazz styles. Students attending the workshop will gain a working musical vocabulary in the language of mainstream jazz. This workshop will offer students a solid starting point, whether they want to play professionally, for personal enjoyment or simply to broaden their knowledge of what it takes to play jazz. [$35 fee]
Drawing and Painting
K40.1405 4 CR F 9:30-12:15 Bert Katz
course meets at Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand street (between Pitt and Willett streets).
This workshop is designed to provide both beginning and advanced students with studio experience in drawing and painting. The human figure will be the primary focus of this studio, although still life and other sources will also be used. A variety of drawing and painting media will be a part of the studio as well as discussions of required gallery and museum visits. An important part of this course will be the exploration of the problem of visual form and the development of mature aesthetic judgment. Selected work produced during the semester will be exhibited on the eighth floor of the Gallatin School at 715 Broadway. [$35 fee]
Discovering Manhattan: Drawing and Painting in the Spirit of the Modern Art Pioneers
K40.1425 4 CR R 3:30-6:10 Barnaby Ruhe
This workshop explores images of New York City as envisioned by various schools of modern art, including Ashcan, Bauhaus, Futurist, Dadaist, and High Tech, and by the artists of the modern period, including Sloan, Mondrian, Hopper, Marin, Brancusi, O’Keefe, Duchamp, Grooms, and Nam June Paik. In response to studying these visions of New York, students will create their own art works—sketching in Times Square with the garrulous attitude of Reginald Marsh, drawing a skyscraper in an ecstatic John Marin breath, creating a collage by rifling through bins with Arman and Duchamp. The workshop concludes with a collaborative mural project and a final paper analyzing various strategies of expression whereby modern artists discovered the meaning of Manhattan. Through a process of appropriation, imitation, and parody, students are thus encouraged to re-enact the process of “discovering Manhattan,” to engage in a dialogue with the city, and thereby to discover their own artistic voices. Readings include E.B.White’s ineffable “Here is New York,” Alan Ginsberg’s outrageous Howl, Robert Henri's Art Spirit, as well as excerpts from Arthur Danto, Harold Rosenberg, and Irving Sandler.
Technology, Art and Public Space
K40.1440 4 CR R 6:20-9:00 Terence Culver
This course will focus on the relationship between art, technology, and public space through the study of historical and contemporary examples, and through creating and installing a work of public art. Special emphasis will be placed on understanding the role of technology and art in society and in defining public interaction. Also, the course will cover the impact, both direct and indirect, of certain technological developments on art and other media and on public space. The course will use technology and public art as a way to reflect on emergent cultural and social transformations in New York City. Students will design and install a work of public art in collaboration with a community-based organization using innovative digital technology.
Writing for Television II
K40.1572 4 CR M 3:30-6:10 Imani Douglas
This workshop focuses on the writer as an individual in the often daunting, sometimes humbling “collaborative” world of TV writing. In this workshop, we will work on capturing the voices, rhythm, and style of varied classic TV hits, while executing class writing assignments. Students will test their discipline, motivation, and ingenuity as they complete their very own “spec script” of a show of their choice, presently on the air. Readings may include How to Write For Television by Madeline Dimaggio and selections from Story by Robert McKee, Screenplay by Syd Field, Comedy Writing for Television and Hollywood by Milt Josefsberg, and How to Write a Movie in 21 Days by Viki King. Students will be required to work in Final Draft software for class projects.
The Urban Environment:Design, Planning, and Public Services
K40.1620 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Donna Goodman
This workshop introduces the basic issues of planning and designing modern urban environments. It explores the physical systems of cities, such as transportation, land use, technology, and infrastructure. Using New York as a prototype, it also explores planning concepts, such as the grid, radial systems, organization of public and private space, historical preservation, landscape, and art. Social and environmental issues are also discussed, and important new concepts for developing green cities. Students create several projects; a slide or photographic essay on the urban landscape; a sketchbook, analyzing a neighborhood or park in maps and diagrams; and an architectural design for a roof terrace, restaurant, or park structure in drawings or models. Readings include Mumford, Jacobs, Kostof, Le Corbusier, Koolhaus, and others. Students should have access to drawing tools and a camera.
Innovations in Arts Publications
K40.1655 4 CR T 2:00-4:45 Lise Friedman
The ever-innovative world of arts publication encompasses a dazzling range of subjects, mediums, and materials: from ancient illuminated manuscripts, provocative political manifestos, and one-of-a-kind artists books to zines, poster and print multiples, and the infinitely reproducible pages of the internet. This workshop will introduce many of these forms through guest lecturers, field trips to specialized collections and museums, directed readings, and hands-on work, which will culminate in final group and individual projects. Readings will include Thinking Print, Illuminated Manuscripts, and Posters: A Concise History.
Solo Performance:Performing the Self in Society
K80.2025 4 CR M 3:30-6:10 Lenora Champagne
this graduate course is open to qualified undergraduates with the permission of the M.A. program advisor, Sharon Friedman. Course meets at La Mama etc., 47 Great Jones street.
This is a class in performance composition that examines performance art’s origins in the art world and in the feminist movement. Participants will develop a solo performance through a series of exercises. Various strategies for structuring material will be considered. The solos will emerge from a process involving improvisation (movement and text) and re-working of material. This class is for those who want to discover and uncover what emerges when they participate in this process, rather than for students who want to “polish” a solo stand-up routine. Readings include performance texts by prominent artists, essays on performance, and video viewings. Attendance at and written analysis of solo performances that occur during the semester and an oral presentation and research paper on the performance artist of your choice are also required. Required texts include: L. Champagne, ed., Out from Under: Texts by Women Performance Artists; C. Carr, On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century; Jo Bonney, ed., Extreme Exposure; optional texts include H. Hughes and D. Roman, eds., O Solo Homo. [$25 fee]
Advanced Directing
K80.2029 4CR W 6:20-9:00 Alec Harrington
this graduate course is open to qualified undergraduates with the permission of the M.A. program advisor, Sharon Friedman. Course meets at La Mama etc., 47 Great Jones street.
This course will focus on working with actors, on textual interpretation, and the application of textual interpretation to director/designer collaboration and rehearsal. The workshop will begin with students directing each other in scenes in order to discover what kind of direction is useful from an actor’s perspective. The class will then move on to a collective textual analysis of a Shakespeare play. Students will then select a Shakespeare play which they will work on for the remainder of the semester. They will have to develop their own interpretation of the play and will undergo a formal oral defense of that interpretation. Students will then have initial design meetings with guest designers, make first rehearsal presentations to the class, and finally rehearse a scene from the play for a final presentation.
Oral History, Cultural Identity and the Arts
K80.2045 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Judith Sloan
this graduate course is open to qualified undergraduates with the permission of the M.A. program advisor, Sharon Friedman. Course meets at La Mama etc., 47 Great Jones street.
Students create artistic works (individual or collaborative) that use oral history as the source material. The course offers training in interviewing and editing techniques, and looks at the impact of “truth-telling” on the people we interview, their families and friends, ourselves and the culture at large. Research explores the balance in accurately reflecting the realities and integrity of the people represented and staying true to the vision of the artist/creator and addresses some of the following questions: Who has a right to a story? How do we represent people from cultures other than our own? Or from our own culture? Readings include (but are not limited to): Studs Terkel’s Hope Dies Last; Art Spiegelman’s Maus I & II; Ira Berlin, et.al (eds), Remembering Slavery; African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation; John Bowe, et. al (eds), GIG. Additional viewing of film, theatre, exhibitions, included in research. Additional readings focus on student’s individual interests: i.e., theatre, artist books, photography, poetry, music, radio, film or video documentary. [$35 fee]
Dramatizing History I
K80.2575 4 CR M 2:00-4:45 Michael Dinwiddie
this graduate course is open to qualified undergraduates with the permission of the M.A. program advisor, Sharon Friedman.
Creating a work based on historical characters poses specific challenges for the playwright or screenwriter. In this arts workshop, students will examine ethical as well as structural and thematic questions raised in the process of tackling a story based on fact. At what point is dramatic license appropriate and/or inappropriate? How is the dramatist’s life experience best utilized in the telling of the story? Each student will identify a subject of special interest, conduct research, and create a scenario that will serve as an outline for a stage play or screenplay. Readings may include works by Anna Deavere Smith, Charles L. Mee, and Alain Locke; texts such as The Big Sea by Langston Hughes, Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch, and Saint Jean by George Bernard Shaw; and films such as Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots.
