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Contact improvisation is an American movement form that uses sustained physical touch to create a dance with a partner. According to founding practitioner Nancy Stark Smith, contact improvisation "resembles other familiar duet forms, such as the embrace, wrestling, surfing, martial arts, and the Jitterbug, encompassing a wide range of movement from stillness to highly athletic.”

“Disability justice culture is simultaneously beautiful and practical. Poetry and dance are as important [to disability justice culture] as a blog post about accessible bathroom hacks—because they are interdependent.”
- Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

An introduction to music theory course. Music theory fundamentals will be taught utilizing voice (singing) and an instrument in hand. Knowledge of the piano keyboard will be learned and utilized. Curriculum will span the harmonic series, circle of 5ths, scales and chords to ear training, harmonic and rhythmic dictation, and beginning composition. Score reading, listening, and analysis will include music of composers from diverse ethnic, racial, sexual, and cultural backgrounds. Course will include singing, aural, and listening components as well as written work.

Lighting design has the powerful ability to shape the experience of an audience. Its practice incorporates elements of artistry and craft, and should interest those working in all aspects of visual and performing arts. In addition to hands-on work with theatrical lighting equipment in and outside of class, awareness of light, play analysis and conceptualization, color, angle, composition and focus are explored in class demonstrations and in a series of individual and group projects.

As a follow-up to the course Working With Light, participants in this class will learn how to adapt lighting design ideas to work within the common constraints of theater architecture and scenery. We will take a deep dive into the process of choosing lighting equipment and figuring out where it needs to be, in relation to everything else in the theater space. Beginning with basic drafting techniques, the course will move ahead to planning lighting coverage with scaled drawings, and then to the creation of a light plot and other supporting paperwork.

How do we physically understand the spaces we are in? How is each of us affected by them? How do we develop a deeper sense of place? The Body Acoustic aims to heighten awareness of the reciprocal relationship between the built environment and our senses. Light and sound, distances, height, volume, surfaces, angles/curves and a/symmetries all affect one’s movement through interior and exterior spaces; one’s movement, in turn, affects the perception of these spaces.

What happens when you start a rehearsal process and you are not sure what you are wanting yet? How do you present movement phrases, concepts, and structures and incorporate new information from the performers? What is it that you see? How do you change your mind?

This is an essential course for students wishing to make new work for performance this term, whether one project or a series. It is designed specifically to support each person’s artistic voice and manner of working.

This course serves as an introduction to dance studies at 51��������. It is intended for students new to Bennington who have a serious interest in dance, as well as those with a desire to deeply explore movement and embodied practice as an artistic form.

In this course we will encounter various strategies for building a career in the performing arts field.

Chavela Vargas has often been called “la voz de México”. An iconoclastic figure, a publicly queer woman singing rancheras and comporting with radical artists and activists, her life is a study in refusing to submit to social norms and embracing the power of art as an act of solidarity, resistance and love. 

This 7 week course will shift how drummers think and play the drum set. Students will be encouraged to move beyond just playing beats and grooves to thinking more compositionally. If you are able to play the drums, we will not completely ignore rhythms, however,learning how the drum set can be a melodic and harmonic instrument is one of the directions students will explore. Students will explore a variety of approaches using but not limited to, found objects, membranophones, ideophones, electronics, and the human voice.

This course creates a space for the study of anatomy and its application to movement techniques. Centered in the bone structure, psoas, and breathing exercises, this work examines different sections of the skeleton such as the pelvis, legs, spine, and shoulder girdle. We will also address the psoas muscle as the pillar(s) of the body connecting our lower and upper halves.

A class, a laboratory that explores the relationship between movement and sound, starting with the phenomenology of sound and acoustics, and considering the translation from sound to movement.

Incorporates listening techniques and sensory perception and encourages participants, through improvisation, to draw from movement, sound, space and memory interchangeably. They will be guided through exercises that help make decisions based on assessment, observation, listening and decision making.

An intermediate review of theory based on a broad range of pop, classical, and jazz songs from the last centuries and from across the world. We’ll start with a primer on scales, intervals, and basic chordal moves such as the rhythm changes, then progress to chromaticism, modulation, and extended triadic harmonies.

In this course, students will work on an extended piece (10+ minutes), as well as a suite of miniatures (< 30 seconds). By playing with scale and continuity, students will be challenged to find their own way to extend their ideas while enriching their own musical language. Students can propose a piece in any style or forces, and we will work together to recruit instrumentalists or resources towards an end-of-term performance or installation.

A primer in orchestration, for students who are selected to write for Sage City Symphony. We will pore over the 19th and 20th century orchestral repertoire, getting to know instruments, ranges, and agilities. Analysis, piano reduction, and orchestration from grand staff will be used to internalize and hear orchestration. Students will be expected to create and get feedback on textural sketches of their future pieces.

How can we be together, interact with each other, create something together, share physical experiences….when we are physically not in the same space and time?

The Alexander Technique invites students to engage with how they move through the world. Students will learn to notice what it is they are doing in their everyday movement, dance practice, performance, & an overall deeper engagement with the body. 

We can define Ndaga as the awareness of legacy and debt, border crossing, re/invention, re/creation, and the desire to create new space for time travel. This is a self-journey. This course is for students who wish to find their artistic voices by exploring an interdisciplinary approach to making work.

At the center of almost every live performance is a single human being who quite literally runs the show: the stage manager. This course will explore the stage manager’s role as both an artist and an administrator, using the SM’s wide-ranging responsibilities as a roadmap to understanding the production process and all the people involved in it.

What remains of dance? The lament of dance’s ephemerality coincides with broader Western temporal projects conceived through the linear unfolding of human progress and social evolution, relegating our movements to an irretrievable past.

In this course, we will be uncovering, re-positioning, and affirming historical legacies and traditions that stand the risk of being lost forever, and explore how to use them to fight discrimination, racism and hate today.

This course is an introduction to Sabar (traditional dance, drum, and ceremony) from Sénégal and Gambia and Traditional West African Mandingo dance and music forms.

This course provides a vibrant introduction to the traditional West African rhythms and movements of the Mandingo and Wolof communities. Students will embark on a journey through both drumming and dancing disciplines, mastering intricate rhythms that will expand their musical vocabulary and enhance their dance techniques.

This course explores the life, works, and revolutionary contributions of Harry Partch (1901–1974), one of the most original and influential American composers of the 20th century. Partch was a pioneer of microtonal music and developed a unique 43-tone scale, which led him to construct his own instruments to realize his visionary compositions. Students will examine Partch’s unconventional approach to tuning, his rejection of equal temperament, and his philosophy of music as an integrated theatrical and corporeal experience.

In this course we will be taking a hands on approach to understanding the lever harp both historically and compositionally. We will be building and stringing small 19 string harps which will be used as the basis for our compositional work where students will be creating new works of varying length for the lever harp to be presented at the end of the semester. We’ll look at what techniques are and are not achievable, what makes this instrument unique to other harps, and how to include it in larger compositional contexts.

In this course we will be looking at the harmonic and melodic structures of traditional Gaelic (Highlands and Islands of Scotland) melodies as well as the contemporary music of the Scottish folk music revival to draw on and create new compositions. Students will compose four melodies (or one larger work) in a variety of traditional styles utilizing the different tune forms we will be discussing and analyzing. Analysis of modern composers use of traditional Celtic/folk melodies will also be covered. Students will be asked to compile their own playlist for inspiration and analysis.

What remains of dance? The lament of dance’s ephemerality coincides with broader Western temporal projects conceived through the linear unfolding of human progress and social evolution, relegating our movements to an irretrievable past.

Selecting melodies and arranging/harmonizing them in gospel, R&B, and jazz traditions. Course will include listening, analyzing, harmonies and singing and playing at piano. Fundamental piano skills preferred but not required.