Arts Workshops
Oral History and Interdisciplinary Arts
K40.1045 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Judith Sloan
Oral History is a complex process in the creation of artistic projects across the disciplines: documentary film, theatre, book arts, exhibitions, web art, public radio, etc. This 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 while 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 with different experiences than our own? What are the nuances in understanding needed for representing people in our own culture and identity or those from a different cultural or class background? Readings include (but are not limited to): Greg Halpern's Harvard Works Because We Do; Art Spiegelman's Maus I & II; Ira Berlin, et.al (eds) Remembering Slavery; Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan's Crossing the BLVD; Jim Fricke and Charlie Ahearn's Oral History of Hip-Hop's First Decade Yes Yes Y'all; as well as works by Studs Terkel, Anna Deveare-Smith, and articles and theory on oral history as a field of study. Guest lectures by filmmakers, book artists, theatre artists as well as viewing of films and listening to public radio projects will be included in the weekly class sessions. For final projects students create collaborative or solo work in the discipline of their own training; theatre, artist books, photography, poetry, music, radio, audio art, film or video.
Performing Stories: East Meets West
K40.1050 4 CR W 2:00-4:45 Lanny Harrison
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 warm‑ups, 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.
The Knowing Body: Awareness Techniques for Performers
K40.1106 4 CR T 6:20-9:00 Robin Powell
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.
Creative Arts in the Helping Professions
K40.1115 4 CR R 9:30-12:15 Maria Hodermarska
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.
Making Dances in the Twenty-first Century: Concepts, Strategies, Actions
K40.1208 4 CR W 11:00-1:45 Leslie Satin
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.
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
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 at the Gallatin School.
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.
Fire and Blood: Art-Making, Culture and Mythology of Mexico
K40.1431 4 CR W 3:30-6:10 Jaime Arrendondo
A rich landscape of art and culture flourished in Mexico for thousands of years beginning with the Olmec civilization at around the second millennium before Christ. With the arrival of the Spaniards in 1519, a new hybrid culture resulted from the fusion of two different worlds, the Iberian and the Native American: a fusion which continues to exist and grow to the present day. This interdisciplinary workshop will closely examine the art, culture and mythology of Mexico, both before and after the conquest, and combine our study of it with hands on art making. The course will begin with a brief overview of the major Mexican muralists, Rivera, Orozco, and Siquieros, and American artists who were influenced by them such as Guston, O’keefe, and Pollock. It will then move chronologically from the Olmec culture occurring 4,000 years ago; Teotihuacan, or the City of the Gods; the Toltecs of Tula, from which emerged Quetzalcoatl the “Feathered Serpent”, a figure that inspired art for centuries; the hyper-religious Aztecs; the large and complex Mayan culture; and lastly, the new hybrid art formed by the synthesis of Spanish and Native American cultures. Topics to be covered will include: astrology/astronomy; religion and shamanism; mythology; and human sacrifice. Museum trips, slide shows, videos, and the reading of rare texts such as the Popul Vuh will also be scheduled.
On Display: Museums and Visual Culture in New York
K40.1450 4 CR R 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.
MyStory: Creating the Audio Narrative
K40.1530 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Emily Hoffman
In the past decade, technological innovations have altered the nature of broadcasting. For the first time in its century-long history, electronic media has become truly and globally participatory. In this course students will study the major trends in critical thought regarding broadcast television and radio, from its beginnings to today, including an examination of our ongoing cultural adaptation to emerging technologies and their attendant narrative forms. From MySpace to YouTube and every podcast and blog in between, the internet is exploding with evidence of self-expression and in this course, students will learn how to participate by documenting their stories and the stories of others in audio form. Readings may include Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead; excerpts from The Art of the Personal Essay by Phillip Lopate including essays by Seneca, Montaigne, Turgenev, and Benjamin; and Broadcasts from the Blitz: How Edward R. Murrow Helped Lead America into War by Philip Seib.
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.
Dramatizing History I
K40.1575 4 CR M 9:30-12:15 Selma Thompson
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 Story by Robert McKee; and films such as Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots.
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 TR 3:30-4:55 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 and DVD 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 Area, Ssgmeister: Made You Look, a History of Illuminated Manuscripts, Looking Closer 5: Critical Writings on Graphic Design.
Performance Composition
K80.2025 4 CR T 3:30-6:10 Lenora Champagne Open to qualified undergraduates with the permission of the instructor, Lenora Champagne (lenoracha@aol.com).
This class in performance composition is for those who want to discover and uncover what emerges when they participate in this process, and for students who are interested in the history of performance art. Participants will develop a solo performance through a series of exercises that utilize various strategies for generating and structuring material. (Strategies that can also be used in creating devised group work.) These performance works will emerge from a process involving improvisation (movement and text), writing and composing, and revision of material. Readings include performance texts by prominent artists, essays on performance, and video viewings. (Required texts include Jo Bonney’s Extreme Exposure and Lenora Champagne’s Out from Under: Texts by Women Performance Artists.) Attendance at and written analysis of solo and other edgy performances that occur during the semester and an oral presentation and research paper on a significant performance development or performance artist are also required.
Artist/Ethnographer Expeditions: Rediscovering NYC Cultures
K80.2048 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 Ruti Talmor Open to qualified undergraduates with the permission of the M.A. Program Advisor, Sharon Friedman (sf2@nyu.edu).
It is said of anthropology that one studies the other in order to understand the self. In this seminar/workshop, we will explore the zone where art and anthropology meet. Art, film, writing and other students who wish to learn how to conduct fieldwork in NY and how to create projects in their chosen medium based on this research are welcome. Media include oral history writing, photography, music, video, web design, and multimedia. The course is roughly divided into 3 parts: 1) Conceptualizations: Through the work of artist-ethnographers such as Richard Fung, Coco Fusco, Jean Rouch and others, we will explore the possibilities and conceptualize class projects. 2) Fieldwork and Method: excerpts from key texts in anthropology and related disciplines will provide a crash course in fieldwork methods while students conduct fieldwork and gather material in their community of choice. 3) Representations: Experimental ethnography, art and other work will serve as examples of poss ible representations. Meanwhile students will put together their final projects, presenting and discussing their progress in class.