WiSe 23/24: Critical Dance Anthropology
Lindsey Drury
Comments
The field of dance anthropology carries a history of ethnologizing cultural “others”. Nonetheless, its methods permeate the field of dance studies. Practices of scoring and notation, (photographic and film) documentation, interviews, observation, researcher first-hand participation, and archival research affiliate present research on dance as art to a difficult history of research on dance as so-called “primitive cultural practice”. In this course, we critically engage with dance anthropological methods, experimenting with auto-ethnography, conducting tests in improvised, embodied experiments, developing participant observation methods, analyzing scores and notations to “reconstruct” dances and discern their social meanings and cultural significance. In-class exercises and experiments will be contextualized by our study of historical filmed, photographed, written, and staged dance anthropological works, including the formative research of Katherine Dunham, Maya Deren, Ernesto de Martino, and Margaret Mead. We will investigate the more recent adoption of ethnographic methods to artistic research, art as social practice, and somatic forms. We will consider, as well, how communities of practice have worked with the archives of dance anthropology, struggling to reconstruct dance heritage from its problematic documents.
- This is a practice-based course, so come prepared to move, observe, and take handwritten notes. As a warning, in some cases, we will be each other’s “objects of analysis”.
- A series of short analyses will be required as a part of the course, the written component of these may be in German or English.
- Instruction language is English, the lab environment, however, is strictly multilingual.
16 Class schedule
Regular appointments