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 M.A. Critical D...  
 Lehrveranstaltung

Institut für Theaterwissenschaft (WE 7)

M.A. Critical Dance Studies (SPO gültig ab WS 24/25)

7215a_MA120

  • Introduction to Critical Dance Studies

    7215aA1.1
    • 17571 Einführungskurs
      Introduction to Critical Dance Studies (Kirsten Maar)
      Zeit: Di 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
      Ort: 103 Sitzungsraum (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      Students are taught about historical and contemporary dance, body and movement concepts, performance analysis, methodological issues and current approaches in dance research.

    • 17582 Übung
      Writing Dance on Film (Lindsey Drury)
      Zeit: Mo 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 13.10.2025)
      Ort: DanceLab (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      This practical seminar engages with dance on film and introduces students to foundational skills in performance analysis and scholarly writing. Toward that end, this course invites students to think of writing as choreography, of cinema as kinetic thought, and of dance as a medium that stretches across bodies, screens, and the written word. In the course, we approach film as a choreographic practice in its own right, exploring how editing, framing, and movement through space create meaning. Alongside our viewing and discussion, we consider how academic writing likewise edits and frames to articulate dance through language. The course thus sets out to foster a layered investigation of mediation—of how dance is transformed when rendered through the lens or into the written word, and how these transformations help us better understand the politics of visibility and the poetics of movement. Students should expect to watch one film per week in this course, as well as to draft a series of experimental writing exercises.

    • 17583 Übung
      Introduction to Dance Practices (Zouk, Sigal)
      Zeit: Termine siehe LV-Details (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
      Ort: DanceLab (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      The course will provide an understanding of the connections between movement impulses, movement generation and processing. In this context the modes of listening as well as of kinesthetic awareness become key competences. The attention is drawn to the complex relationships between different techniques and asks which concepts of the body they are based on. How are they mediated by respective imaginations and understandings of choreography? And to what extent does dancing and improvising together goes far beyond specific techniques? These insights into the basic prerequisites of dance practices opens up a more precise understanding of inclusive approaches to movement analysis. The movement experiences of the individual students are included, but no prior dance knowledge is required for this participatory research approach; nevertheless, active participation in the exercise, attendance at the movement classes and independent research are required.

  • Theory, Aesthetics

    7215aA1.2
    • 17501 Vorlesung
      Theorien der Schauspielkunst III (20. Jahrhundert bis Gegenwart) (Doris Kolesch)
      Zeit: Do 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
      Ort: Hörsaal (Theaterwiss.) (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      Die Vorlesung setzt die kritische Darlegung zentraler schauspieltheoretischer Texte und Konzepte des europäischen Theaters fort, welche in den letzten beiden Semestern vorgenommen wurde. Im Zentrum stehen schauspieltheoretische Überlegungen aus der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (u.a. Stanislawski, Meyerhold, Brecht), aber auch Einflüsse auf das Schauspiel und die Schauspieltheorie z.B. durch Medientechniken bzw. andere Künste (Film, Internet, TikTok etc.) oder die aufkommende Performance-Kunst und das in diesem Zusammenhang vorgeschlagene Spektrum von acting und not-acting (Kirby). Aber auch jüngere Entwicklungen Ende des 20. und zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts wie Fragen der Darstellung im postdramatischen Theater, chorische Auftritte, der Einsatz von Expert*innen des Alltags oder die Verweigerung virtuoser Schauspielkunst werden thematisiert, ebenso wie Fragen der Professionalisierung der Schauspielausbildung. Zudem werden exemplarisch außereuropäische Konzepte von Schauspiel erläutert. Die Vorlesung ist so konzipiert, dass sie auch ohne Besuch der ersten beiden Teile gut verfolgt werden kann.

    • 17502 Vorlesung
      “The personal is political”– Micropolitics in Dance and Performance (Kirsten Maar)
      Zeit: Mi 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
      Ort: Hörsaal (Theaterwiss.) (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      ‘The personal is political’ - this slogan of the second wave of feminism is to be expanded in an intersectional way and analysed in terms of its systemic entanglements of power and privilege. The seminar examines the tensions between the political and the personal or private and the affects that accompany these negotiations, as well as the tensions between artistic autonomy on the one hand and contextualisation on the other. How have artists, choreographers and dancers themselves understood their ‘politicality’, how does ‘the political’ express itself in choreographic form? Social and political changes only intervene in an understanding of choreography, among other things, but also in the material infrastructures of ‘operational choreography’ (Egert) and in our ‘social choreographies’ in performance and everyday movement (Hewitt). In addition to forms of resistance, protest and activism, we attempt to focus on a micropolitical multitude of interacting movements that permeate the artistic and social field and consider the collective structures that open up horizons for future possibilities for action. How do they express themselves in artistic works, but also in different modes of re/production, such as rehearsal, training, or pedagogical and mediating activities in the dance field? Which modes of relationship come into play here and how are they realised along their respective dispositives? The temporal focus is on the transition period from the 1960s to the 1970s, around 1989 and the early 1990s, as well as on recent developments since the 2010s.

    • 17570 Seminar
      „The personal is political“ – Micropolitics in Dance and Performance (Kirsten Maar)
      Zeit: Di 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
      Ort: 103 Sitzungsraum (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      The seminar is accompanying the lecture, but could also be attended independently of it. We will read texts, deepening the understanding of key concepts as well as following choreographic work ranging from the 1960s to our times. The students are taught about historical and contemporary dance, about body and movement concepts, performance analysis, methodological issues and current approaches in dance research. We will read and discuss texts by Lauren Berlant, Susan Best, Adriana Cavarero, Ann Cvetkovich, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Susan Foster, Nadine Georges-Graves, Jack Halberstam, André Lepecki, Kathrin McKittrick, Grada Kilomba, Bojana Kunst, Achille Mbembe, and others. Along with those close readings we will at the same time follow some movement and performance analyses as well as network and production analyses, taking a closer look at the work and their production of choreographers like Ishmael Houston Jones, Karen Finley, Mark Tompkins, Isabel Lewis, Boris Charmatz, Claire Cunningham, Jule Flierl, Liz Rosenfeld, Olympia Bukkakis, Agata Siniarska, Julia B Laperrière, Colleen Ndemeh and Olivia Hyunsin Kim.

  • Historicity, Historiography

    7215aA1.3
    • 17501 Vorlesung
      Theorien der Schauspielkunst III (20. Jahrhundert bis Gegenwart) (Doris Kolesch)
      Zeit: Do 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
      Ort: Hörsaal (Theaterwiss.) (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      Die Vorlesung setzt die kritische Darlegung zentraler schauspieltheoretischer Texte und Konzepte des europäischen Theaters fort, welche in den letzten beiden Semestern vorgenommen wurde. Im Zentrum stehen schauspieltheoretische Überlegungen aus der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (u.a. Stanislawski, Meyerhold, Brecht), aber auch Einflüsse auf das Schauspiel und die Schauspieltheorie z.B. durch Medientechniken bzw. andere Künste (Film, Internet, TikTok etc.) oder die aufkommende Performance-Kunst und das in diesem Zusammenhang vorgeschlagene Spektrum von acting und not-acting (Kirby). Aber auch jüngere Entwicklungen Ende des 20. und zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts wie Fragen der Darstellung im postdramatischen Theater, chorische Auftritte, der Einsatz von Expert*innen des Alltags oder die Verweigerung virtuoser Schauspielkunst werden thematisiert, ebenso wie Fragen der Professionalisierung der Schauspielausbildung. Zudem werden exemplarisch außereuropäische Konzepte von Schauspiel erläutert. Die Vorlesung ist so konzipiert, dass sie auch ohne Besuch der ersten beiden Teile gut verfolgt werden kann.

    • 17502 Vorlesung
      “The personal is political”– Micropolitics in Dance and Performance (Kirsten Maar)
      Zeit: Mi 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
      Ort: Hörsaal (Theaterwiss.) (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      ‘The personal is political’ - this slogan of the second wave of feminism is to be expanded in an intersectional way and analysed in terms of its systemic entanglements of power and privilege. The seminar examines the tensions between the political and the personal or private and the affects that accompany these negotiations, as well as the tensions between artistic autonomy on the one hand and contextualisation on the other. How have artists, choreographers and dancers themselves understood their ‘politicality’, how does ‘the political’ express itself in choreographic form? Social and political changes only intervene in an understanding of choreography, among other things, but also in the material infrastructures of ‘operational choreography’ (Egert) and in our ‘social choreographies’ in performance and everyday movement (Hewitt). In addition to forms of resistance, protest and activism, we attempt to focus on a micropolitical multitude of interacting movements that permeate the artistic and social field and consider the collective structures that open up horizons for future possibilities for action. How do they express themselves in artistic works, but also in different modes of re/production, such as rehearsal, training, or pedagogical and mediating activities in the dance field? Which modes of relationship come into play here and how are they realised along their respective dispositives? The temporal focus is on the transition period from the 1960s to the 1970s, around 1989 and the early 1990s, as well as on recent developments since the 2010s.

  • Practice-led Research A

    7215aA1.4
    • 17581 Übung
      Rhythm & Movement (Alina Saggerer)
      Zeit: Mi 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
      Ort: DanceLab (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      What is rhythm and how is it connected to bodies and movement? We find rhythm not only in music, but also in everyday life. Today, everyday rhythm is deeply entangled with labor and productivity also it is not only an element of audible art but also important for any other art form. This course critically examines and discusses concepts of rhythm and rhythmanalysis from musicological, sociological and cultural perspective. We begin with theoretical investigations, reading texts by Henri Lefebvre, Julian Caskel, Inge Baxmann and others. How have ideas and concepts of rhythm developed? What cultural, technological, and political forces have shaped them? How can rhythm be experienced, described and analyzed? In the second part of the course, we start to explore rhythm more physically. The students will develop their own exercises to experience rhythm in movement and reflect on how these bodily practices inform or challenge theoretical perspectives.

    • 17584 Übung
      Between Choreography, Dramaturgy and the Curatorial (Kirsten Maar)
      Zeit: Mi 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
      Ort: K 031 Seminarraum (Anbau Cinepoetics) (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      The boundaries between the fields of choreographic practice, dramaturgy and curation are becoming increasingly blurred. Choreographers and dancers take on dramaturgical activities, while dramaturges describe themselves as curators and the discourses that shape post-dramat(urg)ic aesthetics reflect alternative narratives, formats and shifts in media technology as well as political and social needs. The field of work of dramaturgical practices has become correspondingly diffuse: between curatorial, mediating and pedagogical tasks, dramaturges are above all also seismographs of a constantly differentiating field: not only do the production conditions of the independent scene require alternative ways of working, but above all the blurring of boundaries between the arts, between art and activism also contribute to changing formats. What skills are required, what forms of collaboration result from these necessities? How is the artistic and the political mediated? And how can we, n times of austerity politics and societal backlashes describe an ‘ethics of the dramaturgical’? As part of the exercise, theories on trans-disciplinary dance dramaturgy and curating between the arts will be read, and current shifts in the dance field will be analyzed and discussed with the participants. In an exchange with Berlin dance creators from the independent scene, the dance field will be rolled up, its institutions and its development will be presented and the openings into other fields will be examined. In this way, current perspectives on the fields between dramaturgy, programming, curation, mediation, and politics will be developed.

  • Practice-led Research B

    7215aA1.5
    • 17580 Projektseminar
      Listening to your listening - exploring the musicality of movements and dancing musical gestures (Pi, Pol)
      Zeit: Termine siehe LV-Details (Erster Termin: 28.10.2025)
      Ort: DanceLab, AdK Berlin , Hörsaal FU Berlin (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      I was surrounded by music long before I engaged with dance as a privileged language for connection. Between the ages of 6 and 31, I learned from practicing the flute recorder, solfeggio, rhythmics, harmony, choir singing, violin, viola, rabeca and Brazilian guitar, I learned from opera, baroque, classical, romantic and contemporary music, from Brazilian folk and traditional music too. And yet, it was only when I encountered physical theater, butoh and later so-called contemporary dance that everything really made sense. As a sort of revelation, one day I had the feeling that I could make better music with my movements than with my instruments. Over the years, I've learned that my relationship with movement is above all a musical one: what moves me is a taste for a playful relationship with time that is always being reinvented. How can we listen to and compose with the intensities, speeds, articulations, suspensions and rhythms that inhabit our movements? I'd like to continue to explore this question with the students, sharing tools and practices that have accompanied me for a long time or that we will invent together. I wish to explore possible translations for musical notions such as rhythm, tempo, nuance, timbre, articulation and ornament through individual and group movement research, but also invest the idea of listening as a practice of connecting to intuition. I have been working with non-ordinary states of consciousness for some years, a practice called Self-induced Cognitive Trance that could also be described as learning to listen to intuition. I don’t distinguish working with listening to our musicality from intuitive listening, they are for me both part of an ethics of always working from and with what is already there. Thus, both approaches to the act of listening will be intertwined during the semester. This shared research is an invitation to listen to what irresistibly calls us to movement – to learn collectively to give space and visibility to the musicality that is already in us, in our personal ways of engaging with movement, and to nurture and unfold them further.

    • 17584 Übung
      Between Choreography, Dramaturgy and the Curatorial (Kirsten Maar)
      Zeit: Mi 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
      Ort: K 031 Seminarraum (Anbau Cinepoetics) (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      The boundaries between the fields of choreographic practice, dramaturgy and curation are becoming increasingly blurred. Choreographers and dancers take on dramaturgical activities, while dramaturges describe themselves as curators and the discourses that shape post-dramat(urg)ic aesthetics reflect alternative narratives, formats and shifts in media technology as well as political and social needs. The field of work of dramaturgical practices has become correspondingly diffuse: between curatorial, mediating and pedagogical tasks, dramaturges are above all also seismographs of a constantly differentiating field: not only do the production conditions of the independent scene require alternative ways of working, but above all the blurring of boundaries between the arts, between art and activism also contribute to changing formats. What skills are required, what forms of collaboration result from these necessities? How is the artistic and the political mediated? And how can we, n times of austerity politics and societal backlashes describe an ‘ethics of the dramaturgical’? As part of the exercise, theories on trans-disciplinary dance dramaturgy and curating between the arts will be read, and current shifts in the dance field will be analyzed and discussed with the participants. In an exchange with Berlin dance creators from the independent scene, the dance field will be rolled up, its institutions and its development will be presented and the openings into other fields will be examined. In this way, current perspectives on the fields between dramaturgy, programming, curation, mediation, and politics will be developed.

  • Approaches to Research

    7215aA1.6
    • 17592 Colloquium
      Colloquium für Masterstudierende und Promovierende (Gabriele Brandstetter)
      Zeit: Di 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
      Ort: Seminar-/ Sichtungsraum 006 EG Altbau (Grunewaldstr. 35)
    • 17595 Colloquium
      Colloquium für Masterstudierende und Promovierende (Kirsten Maar)
      Zeit: Do 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
      Ort: K 031 Seminarraum (Anbau Cinepoetics) (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      Students will engage with current research topics and questions. They present their own specific research topics, contribute to discussions, and learn to explain conceptual and methodological decisions. Principles of rigorous academic work and good scientific practice are taken into account. Students also work on their academic writing and oral presentation.

  • Dance, Arts, Media

    7215aA2.1
    • 17501 Vorlesung
      Theorien der Schauspielkunst III (20. Jahrhundert bis Gegenwart) (Doris Kolesch)
      Zeit: Do 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 16.10.2025)
      Ort: Hörsaal (Theaterwiss.) (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      Die Vorlesung setzt die kritische Darlegung zentraler schauspieltheoretischer Texte und Konzepte des europäischen Theaters fort, welche in den letzten beiden Semestern vorgenommen wurde. Im Zentrum stehen schauspieltheoretische Überlegungen aus der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (u.a. Stanislawski, Meyerhold, Brecht), aber auch Einflüsse auf das Schauspiel und die Schauspieltheorie z.B. durch Medientechniken bzw. andere Künste (Film, Internet, TikTok etc.) oder die aufkommende Performance-Kunst und das in diesem Zusammenhang vorgeschlagene Spektrum von acting und not-acting (Kirby). Aber auch jüngere Entwicklungen Ende des 20. und zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts wie Fragen der Darstellung im postdramatischen Theater, chorische Auftritte, der Einsatz von Expert*innen des Alltags oder die Verweigerung virtuoser Schauspielkunst werden thematisiert, ebenso wie Fragen der Professionalisierung der Schauspielausbildung. Zudem werden exemplarisch außereuropäische Konzepte von Schauspiel erläutert. Die Vorlesung ist so konzipiert, dass sie auch ohne Besuch der ersten beiden Teile gut verfolgt werden kann.

    • 17502 Vorlesung
      “The personal is political”– Micropolitics in Dance and Performance (Kirsten Maar)
      Zeit: Mi 16:00-18:00 (Erster Termin: 15.10.2025)
      Ort: Hörsaal (Theaterwiss.) (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      ‘The personal is political’ - this slogan of the second wave of feminism is to be expanded in an intersectional way and analysed in terms of its systemic entanglements of power and privilege. The seminar examines the tensions between the political and the personal or private and the affects that accompany these negotiations, as well as the tensions between artistic autonomy on the one hand and contextualisation on the other. How have artists, choreographers and dancers themselves understood their ‘politicality’, how does ‘the political’ express itself in choreographic form? Social and political changes only intervene in an understanding of choreography, among other things, but also in the material infrastructures of ‘operational choreography’ (Egert) and in our ‘social choreographies’ in performance and everyday movement (Hewitt). In addition to forms of resistance, protest and activism, we attempt to focus on a micropolitical multitude of interacting movements that permeate the artistic and social field and consider the collective structures that open up horizons for future possibilities for action. How do they express themselves in artistic works, but also in different modes of re/production, such as rehearsal, training, or pedagogical and mediating activities in the dance field? Which modes of relationship come into play here and how are they realised along their respective dispositives? The temporal focus is on the transition period from the 1960s to the 1970s, around 1989 and the early 1990s, as well as on recent developments since the 2010s.

    • 17572 Seminar
      Witch Dances (Lindsey Drury)
      Zeit: Di 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 14.10.2025)
      Ort: 103 Sitzungsraum (Grunewaldstr. 35)

      Kommentar

      This seminar explores how a literary history of “witch dances” has informed dance narration of embodiment, gender violence, and ideations of alterity. We begin with the modern classic Caliban and the Witch, in which Sylvia Federici built a transatlantic, Marxist history that tied colonial oppression of Indigenous peoples to religious oppression of women in late-medieval Europe. The witch, she argued, is a repeating trope wielded over centuries by colonial and church authorities against the body sovereignty of the lowest classes and local systems of care, including medicinal practices, midwifery, and sacred and ceremonial rites. As the seminar continues, we go through the record, critically analysing the trope of the “witch dance” over the centuries. We move from the paranoid, bombastic, and sexually explicit witch treatises of the late-medieval and early modern periods, through colonial condemnations of Indigenous performance and dance practices as acts of “witchcraft”, into the “witch dances” of Ausdruckstanz artists that drew on European-historical materials, and the experimental dance and performance scene that emerged among “wiccan” and neo-pagan movements of 1970s California feminists and Queer artist communities. Our work will consistently inquire how dance makers continue to interact with the trope of the “witch dance”, especially in explorations of alterity and persecution. Our work on “witch dances” will bring up questions of time and history and investigate the ways that dancers have (in the past) and do (at present) interact with coloniality, misogyny, and the commodification of bodies through the “witch dance” trope.