Music Composition for Dance

Course Description

Summary

Music Composition for Dance looks retrospectively at collaborative twentieth-century works for ballet and modern dance by Igor Stravinsky, Nijinsky, Duke Ellington, Alvin Ailey, John Cage, Syvilla Fort, Aaron Copland, and Martha Graham, among others. These collaborations helped revolutionize dance choreography and musical methods from their use of tonality, sonorities, texture, rhythm, narratives, and concepts producing innovative works that continue to inform and inspire. Surveying these collaborations will provide students with an informed understanding of these artists creative process, and how they can apply these processes to develop their own original work. Collaboration is central to this course and will be done safely. Students will learn methods that can be used in their creative process in music composition, choreography, theatre, film, and other disciplines. Class activities and assignments include, but are not limited to, researching and listening to music, viewing choreography on film and video, searching archives, examining musical scores, creating narratives based on blood memories, responding to biographical readings in discussion and writing, including creating an original music composition to be presented either live or videotaped with a choreographer. These works can be presented in music workshop, outdoors, or in a socially distant approved space. Playing an instrument is not required, however, having basic knowledge of recording music using Garage Band, Logic Audio, or other recording software is a plus. A personal laptop is needed for this course.