Handbook : Unit informationEdith Cowan University

School: Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts

This unit information may be updated and amended immediately prior to semester. To ensure you have the correct outline, please check it again at the beginning of semester.

• Unit Title

  Dance History and Analysis 2

• Unit Code

  DAN2135

• Year

  2017

• Enrolment Period

  1

• Version

  1

• Nominal Hours

  72

• Credit Points

  5

• Full Year Unit

  Y

• Mode of Delivery

  On Campus
  

• Unit Coordinator

  Ms Susan Desley PEACOCK

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Description

This unit involves a conceptual approach to dance performance/activities extending to ethnographical contexts. Its point of departure encompasses the fundamental components of movement, the body, time and space, in order to explore some of the potential knowledge/s generated through dance. The unit extends this enquiry to an initial survey of Australian and Asian dance practises with particular attention to ethnographical contexts, as well as to the particularities of commercial dance forms on film and stage. Emphasis is placed on the concepts in both written and oral formats.

Prerequisite Rule

Students must pass 1 unit from DAN1035

Equivalent Rule

Unit was previously coded AWD2206

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this unit students should be able to:

1. Analyse selected dance repertoire with an increased conceptual acuity and descriptive facility.
2. Demonstrate an increased breadth of contextual verbal and audio-visual knowledge of the issues surrounding dance.
3. Demonstrate fundamental knowledge of the different perceptions of dance for Australian Aboriginal and Asian communities.
4. Develop a critical approach to the ideas of dance and its works in relation to the social/cultural construction of body, space, time, gender, class and ethnicity.
5. Engage with and offer innovative suggestions about the role of dance in the current socio-political environment.
6. Express in both oral and written formats clarity of ideas and concepts.
7. Show an appreciation of the place of popular genres in the development of western dance.

Unit Content

1. Commercial entertainment from vaudeville and music halls to Broadway musicals and Hollywood films.
2. Early modernism and dance artists' relationships with mechanisation and urbanisation.
3. Expression of ideas and concepts in both written and oral formats.
4. Social constructions of 'the body,' 'space' and 'time.'
5. Socio/cultural contexts through studies of dance from world cultures: Aboriginal Australia, Japan, Cambodia, China, India, Korea and Indonesia.
6. Terms and concepts such as modernism, postmodernism, binary construction, ethnocentricism, nationalism, multiculturalism and cross-culturalism against ideas of corporeality.
7. The roles played by gender in dance.

Additional Learning Experience Information

Seminars, Video analysis, Performance analysis and Independent study.

Assessment

GS1 GRADING SCHEMA 1 Used for standard coursework units

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant Board of Examiners.

* Assessment item identified for English language proficiency

Core Reading(s)

• Burt, R. (1998). Alien bodies. London: Routledge.
• Viala, J. (1988). Butoh : shades of darkness. Tokyo, Japan: Shufunotomo.
• (1996). Corporealities : dancing knowledge, culture and power. London: Routledge.
• Cullberg, B. (1987). Dance in new dimensions : Birgit Cullberg and the TV ballet. Stockholm: Proprius.
• Thomas, H. (1995). Dance, Modernity and Culture. Thomas, Helen (1995) Dance, Modernity and Culture: Explorations in the Sociology of Dance London; Routledge.
• Hanna, J. L. (1988). Dance, Sex and Gender. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
• Ackroyd, P. (1979). Dressing Up: Transvestism and Drag. London: Thames & Hudson.
• Manning, S. A. (1993). Ecstasy and the demon : feminism and nationalism in the dances of Mary Wigman. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Kislan, R. (1987). Hoofing on Broadway : a history of show dancing. New York: Prentice Hall Press.
• Marranca, B., & Dasgupta, G. (1991). Interculturalism and Performance: Writings from PAJ. New York: PAJ Publications.
• Jordan, S., & Allen, D. (1993). Parallel Lines. (1993) Parallel Lines: Media Representations of Dance London; John Libby.
• Jagose, A. (1996). Queer theory. Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press.
• (1986). Reading dancing : bodies and subjects in contemporary American dance. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Astaire, F. (1981). Steps in Time. New York: Da Capo Press.
• Royce, A. P. (1977). The anthropology of dance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Jowitt, D. (1989). Time and the dancing image. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Banes, S. (1994). Writing dancing in the age of postmodernism. Hannover: University Press of New England.

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