Arts Workshops
Oral History, Cultural Identity and the Arts
K40.1045 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Judith Sloan
Students create artistic works (theatre, film, visual art, writing, etc.) that are informed by oral history. 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): Greg Halpern’s, Harvard Works Because We Do, Studs Terkel’s Hope Dies Last; Art Spiegelman’s Maus I & II; Ira Berlin, et.al (eds), Remembering Slavery; John Bowe, et. al (eds), GIG, as well as articles and excerpts from various oral history and radio projects. Additional viewing of film, theatre, exhibitions, included in research. For final projects, research material will be individualized to focus on student’s specific interests, i.e., theatre, artist books, photography, poetry, music, radio, audio art, film or video documentary.
Performing Stories: 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, Louise Steinman’s The Knowing Body, and John Welwood's Ordinary Magic. [$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.; Genocide of the Mind, Marilo Moore, ed.; 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 piece. 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 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 W 11:00-1:45 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. Course work combines a study of contemporary popular music in terms of form, style, and instrumentation, with a review of practical music theory and the development of 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 any student 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.
On Display: Museums and Visual Culture in New York
K40.1450 4 CR T 6:20-9:00 Sean Scheller
As the Museum capital of the world, New York City offers students a unique opportunity to explore the roles and cultural meanings of “the museum.” In this course, students will investigate the historical, philosophical, theoretical, and practical aspects of the collection and exhibition of art and artifacts in museums. Using some of the leading museum/art institutions in New York as examples, this course will begin with a survey of the history of the museum, followed by topics such as audience and community outreach, curatorial strategies for exhibition and collection development, conservation issues, and museum architecture. Course readings will include such works as Introduction to Museum Work by G. Ellis Burcaw; Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries by David Carrier; and Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift edited by Gail Anderson. There will be two museum visits scheduled outside of class time as well as an in-class presentation by each student.
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.
Green Design and Planning
K40.1623 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Donna Goodman
As we enter the twenty-first century, architects and planners face a new set of challenges. The world population has tripled in less than a century. The demand for food, water, housing, energy, products, and services has grown at an even faster pace. In response to these issues, designers and planners have created new concepts for green buildings, green masterplans, regional transportation, and alternative products. They have also made efforts to introduce new laws and environmental standards. This coure explores environnmetal concepts through reading, discussion, slide lectures, films, and projects. Students are asked to write a short paper and develop two design projects. The papers examine issues, such as energy, recycling, product development, pollution, planning, and design. Projects include assignments like the planning of a roof terrace, analysis of an urban park, or design of a green building. Students will need a camera and drafting tools.
Innovations in Arts Publications
K40.1655 4 CR F 12:30-3:15 Lise Friedman
The ever-innovative world of arts publications encompasses a dazzling range of subjects, mediums, and materials: from ancient illuminated manuscripts, provocative political manifestos, and one-of-a-kind artists books to handmade zines, high-end glossies, poster and print multiples, CD covers, and the infinitely reproducible pages of the internet. This workshop will introduce and explore 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 may include Thinking Print, Illuminated Manuscripts, Dos Logos, Posters in History, and Demanifest.
The following graduate courses are open to qualified undergraduates with the permission of the M.A. program advisor, Sharon Friedman.
Solo Performance: Performing the Self in Society
K80.2025 4 CR T 3:30-6:10 Lenora Champagne
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]
Artist/Ethnographer Expeditions: Rediscovering NYC Cultures
K80.2048 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 Ricardo Montez
Self-expression springs from self-discovery. This arts seminar course will focus on developing tools for researching a specific project drawn from the multitude of cultures that coexist in New York City today. Through the medium of oral history writing, photography, music or video, the student will learn the importance of understanding their own ethnic and cultural diversity in relationship to the work they do in the community of their choice. Students will be required to research areas of cultural density and to conduct field research using one or more of the above-mentioned media for either an individual or group art project. Along with their actual field work and art project each student will be responsible for keeping a weekly journal. Readings may include: A Wandering Feast: A Journey Through the Jewish Culture in Eastern Europe (Strom); Reading Lolita in Tehran (Nafisi); Leaving Mother Lake: A Girlhood at the Edge of the World (Yang Erche Namus, Christine Mathieu), and Underground Harmonies: Music and Politics in the Subways of New York (Tannenbaum).
Writing for Stage and Film
K80.2570 4 CR M 2:00-4:45 Selma Thompson
Prerequisite: K80.2575. Students who do not meet the prerequisite but who have prior experience in writing for stage or film are invited to e-mail Selma Thompson (st35@nyu.edu) for permission to register.
This workshop is for writers ready and willing to make the time commitment necessary to produce a well-structured outline and at least the first act of a script (although students will be supported/encouraged to write a complete first draft, if possible.) We will hone our craft through writing exercises, and through screenings of film scenes which illustrate aspects of dramatic writing. The majority of our time will be spent presenting work and giving/receiving feedback (the ability to engage in collaborative discussion, and offer useful commentary, is an essential professional skill). Additionally, we will read/analyze recently produced screenplays to understand structure and how to make the story exciting "on the page". Although we will examine fundamentals of drama (dialogue, subtext, motivation, etc.) primarily through film study, playwrights are welcome to enroll in the workshop and consult with the instructor about supplementing the reading with plays that may inspire their work more directly. Students should come to the class with some scriptwriting experience and/or a background in acting or film.
