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Each term, Bennington Visual Arts offers a program of 4-5 lectures by visiting arts professionals: artists, curators, historians and critics, selected to showcase the diversity of contemporary art practices. Designed to enhance a broader and deeper knowledge of various disciplines and issues in the Visual Arts and to stimulate campus dialogue around topical issues in contemporary art and culture, these thematically curated presentations offer students the opportunity to engage with art by emerging and internationally-known artists from underrepresented backgrounds.

This discussion-animated, readings-based seminar provides art historical, cultural, and critical contexts for the Visual Arts Lecture Series (VALS). In addition to our ongoing interrogation of the public lecture as such, students present their own work (in any field) and analyze the technical and stylistic aspects of structuring an effective and engaging ‘talk.’ The course provides unique opportunities for interaction with visiting artists, curators, critics, and historians.

Chromophilia, refers to intense passion and love for color. What is it about color that has the power to induce reverie, and conversely to manipulate, or disgust? How does color work? What is the role of color in visual art? In language? How do we understand and respond to color from phenomenological, poetic, philosophical, and societal vantage points? How as artists can we become effective stewards of our passionately-loved and yet ever-shifting chroma?

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.

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.

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.

This course gives students the opportunity to encounter, participate in and design choreographic practices with an emphasis on the vast approaches to process and artistic research that are current and emergent in the expanded field of dance. The course challenges students to develop relationships to performance/performative action as research. We will engage practices where seeing and being seen by each other are central, studying the ways in which witnessing one another in process stimulates and deepens learning.

This course looks through multiple modes of questioning, research, and a critically theoretical lens to put into consideration the complex ways that dance shapes and reflects our lives. We will look to scholars, artists, thinkers, and ourselves to process the elliptical paths people take to understand material existence through the relationality of dance. We will try to bring a scope of questioning to regard dance as an artistic practice which illuminates the continuum of time rooted in the lived phenomena of recognizing aliveness as it is lived.

This course utilizes a seminar and workshop format focusing on conceptual, relational, and material frameworks of the choreographic. Through shaping a bibliographic course archive, we will source current developments within the field of contemporary art making. The class investigations, projects and discussions will yield imaginative and experimental directions for student’s development towards a senior thesis project.

PODs offer students the opportunity to make connections through multiple access points, especially in areas of performance. PODs are designed to help students recognize the tools and methodologies used in their own creative work both as performers and as choreographers. Structurally each POD is identified by a unique topic. PODs have required rehearsal times and culminate in a public showing.

The artist will create an original work with BFA students through an intensive research and rehearsal process.

PODs offer students the opportunity to make connections through multiple access points, especially in areas of performance. PODs are designed to help students recognize the tools and methodologies used in their own creative work both as performers and as choreographers. Structurally each POD is identified by a unique topic. PODs have required rehearsal times and culminate in a public showing.

The artist will create an original work with BFA students through an intensive research and rehearsal process.

This seminar course explores and enacts multidirectional modes of research in and through dance. The course moves through lectures, workshops and experiments that activate processes of creation/performance and guide each student in the development of a portfolio of documents related to professional practice. Students will create social and public platforms for their research and engage in dialogues related to sustainability, equity, and possibility within the field of dance.

This course is designed to be the culmination of the BFA program for all dance majors. Each student will propose a thesis project, develop goals and objectives for the semester, and present their work. Modes of practicing, situating and expressing thesis project research will be mobilized and extended through ongoing critical dialogue. We will attend to, in practice, the urgent questions facing our lives and the field of dance and performance. 

This course is designed to be the culmination of the BFA program for all dance majors. Each student will propose a thesis project, develop goals and objectives for the semester, and present their work. Modes of practicing, situating and expressing thesis project research will be mobilized and extended through ongoing critical dialogue. We will attend to, in practice, the urgent questions facing our lives and the field of dance and performance. 

Students will work with their advisor to self-design study through combining and creating new pathways through the curriculum.

Variable Credit, 1-4 Credits

Each Practice + Process course is designed around the research/pedagogic interests of the faculty member leading the class. The overall curricular structure positions studio practice, creative process and critical reading, thinking and languaging as integrated elements within one course, enabling students to move between modes of learning, reflection and making.

Module dates: September 2-23

Each Practice + Process course is designed around the research/pedagogic interests of the faculty member leading the class. The overall curricular structure positions studio practice, creative process and critical reading, thinking and languaging as integrated elements within one course, enabling students to move between modes of learning, reflection and making.

Module dates: September 23-October 16

Each Practice + Process course is designed around the research/pedagogic interests of the faculty member leading the class. The overall curricular structure positions studio practice, creative process and critical reading, thinking and languaging as integrated elements within one course, enabling students to move between modes of learning, reflection and making.

Module dates: October 21-November 13

Each Practice + Process course is designed around the research/pedagogic interests of the faculty member leading the class. The overall curricular structure positions studio practice, creative process and critical reading, thinking and languaging as integrated elements within one course, enabling students to move between modes of learning, reflection and making.

Module dates: November 19-December 12

Studio Practice is designed to offer each student a rigorous and immersive dance study experience. A deep-dive into practices of critical physicality, students will be supported in making direct connections across an abundance of dance forms that rearrange and blur the boundaries between traditional and emerging techniques. Studio Practice courses focus on the relationships between curiosity, desire, strength, effort, force, and presence, all while moving within the lineages and histories that inform the ways in which we create and encounter our dancing futures.

Studio Practice is designed to offer each student a rigorous and immersive dance study experience. A deep-dive into practices of critical physicality, students will be supported in making direct connections across an abundance of dance forms that rearrange and blur the boundaries between traditional and emerging techniques. Studio Practice courses focus on the relationships between curiosity, desire, strength, effort, force, and presence, all while moving within the lineages and histories that inform the ways in which we create and encounter our dancing futures.

Studio Practice is designed to offer each student a rigorous and immersive dance study experience. A deep-dive into practices of critical physicality, students will be supported in making direct connections across an abundance of dance forms that rearrange and blur the boundaries between traditional and emerging techniques. Studio Practice courses focus on the relationships between curiosity, desire, strength, effort, force, and presence, all while moving within the lineages and histories that inform the ways in which we create and encounter our dancing futures.

Studio Practice is designed to offer each student a rigorous and immersive dance study experience. A deep-dive into practices of critical physicality, students will be supported in making direct connections across an abundance of dance forms that rearrange and blur the boundaries between traditional and emerging techniques. Studio Practice courses focus on the relationships between curiosity, desire, strength, effort, force, and presence, all while moving within the lineages and histories that inform the ways in which we create and encounter our dancing futures.

Studio Practice is designed to offer each student a rigorous and immersive dance study experience. A deep-dive into practices of critical physicality, students will be supported in making direct connections across an abundance of dance forms that rearrange and blur the boundaries between traditional and emerging techniques. Studio Practice courses focus on the relationships between curiosity, desire, strength, effort, force, and presence, all while moving within the lineages and histories that inform the ways in which we create and encounter our dancing futures.

Studio Practice is designed to offer each student a rigorous and immersive dance study experience. A deep-dive into practices of critical physicality, students will be supported in making direct connections across an abundance of dance forms that rearrange and blur the boundaries between traditional and emerging techniques. Studio Practice courses focus on the relationships between curiosity, desire, strength, effort, force, and presence, all while moving within the lineages and histories that inform the ways in which we create and encounter our dancing futures.

Studio Practice is designed to offer each student a rigorous and immersive dance study experience. A deep-dive into practices of critical physicality, students will be supported in making direct connections across an abundance of dance forms that rearrange and blur the boundaries between traditional and emerging techniques. Studio Practice courses focus on the relationships between curiosity, desire, strength, effort, force, and presence, all while moving within the lineages and histories that inform the ways in which we create and encounter our dancing futures.

Studio Practice is designed to offer each student a rigorous and immersive dance study experience. A deep-dive into practices of critical physicality, students will be supported in making direct connections across an abundance of dance forms that rearrange and blur the boundaries between traditional and emerging techniques. Studio Practice courses focus on the relationships between curiosity, desire, strength, effort, force, and presence, all while moving within the lineages and histories that inform the ways in which we create and encounter our dancing futures.

Studio Practice is designed to offer each student a rigorous and immersive dance study experience. A deep-dive into practices of critical physicality, students will be supported in making direct connections across an abundance of dance forms that rearrange and blur the boundaries between traditional and emerging techniques. Studio Practice courses focus on the relationships between curiosity, desire, strength, effort, force, and presence, all while moving within the lineages and histories that inform the ways in which we create and encounter our dancing futures.

Studio Practice is designed to offer each student a rigorous and immersive dance study experience. A deep-dive into practices of critical physicality, students will be supported in making direct connections across an abundance of dance forms that rearrange and blur the boundaries between traditional and emerging techniques. Studio Practice courses focus on the relationships between curiosity, desire, strength, effort, force, and presence, all while moving within the lineages and histories that inform the ways in which we create and encounter our dancing futures.

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.