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Beginning to advanced lessons in bass technique and appropriate theory.

Lessons on Tuesdays – Schedule TBA.

Advanced studies in theory relating to performance.

Students must be enrolled in Bass with Bisio (MIN4417) simultaneously, no exceptions. This class is only for advanced students and by permission of instructor.

Through mentor approved independently paced work, students develop and schedule their own weekly, planned creative practices using student-initiated resources and/or classes. Mentors guide students through the designed plan that can include a combination of practices, techniques, technologies and methodologies. The study format should provide opportunity for varied approaches and choices.

This course allows students to self-design course work by combining topics and approaches from the Practice LABs and the Study LABs to meet required hours. The Individualized LABS take the form of a series of self directed intensive workshops and study immersions.

Variable Credit, 1-2 Credits

Students work to develop vocabularies, resources and methodologies to support varied approaches to thesis practices to include research into practice, performance as research, practice into research, practice-based research, bibliography as method, citational fieldings and research as action. The course guides students through reflective, critical processes during one-on-one, small and large group course formats.

This course allows students more time to complete thesis project work.

This interdisciplinary class looks at the relationship between the visual arts, performance and dance. In particular, we will focus on the influence of collage across disciplines by finding common methods and themes, such as juxtaposition, chance and appropriation. We will trace the history of collage in the visual arts and then investigate its impact on other fields, including film, music, literature and dance. Lectures and readings will expose students to a wide range of modern and contemporary art forms.

This interdisciplinary class looks at the relationship between the visual arts, performance and dance. In particular, we will focus on the influence of collage across disciplines by finding common methods and themes, such as juxtaposition, chance and appropriation. We will trace the history of collage in the visual arts and then investigate its impact on other fields, including film, music, literature and dance. Lectures and readings will expose students to a wide range of modern and contemporary art forms.

What does studying together offer us critically that studying alone might not? Ariella Azoulay refers to studying with companions as a method of unlearning. What are the shifts experienced when you are studying with and alongside others? What conditions might group study provide that allow different questions and understandings to emerge? If, as Irit Rogoff states, “All research is collaborative,” how might these study groups expand our thinking through collaborative practices? What methodologies emerge?

During this course, students will begin to reflect, gather, articulate, and compose their extensive body of professional work in the field of dance by organizing this work into a text which will be bound. The portfolio is developed to include a thoughtful and critically developed artist statement, current CV, written narratives of their work, press & public reviews, and a list of any grants, honorariums and/or fellowships along with the encouragement of a creative approach to sharing the emergence of themselves as dance artists.

Students propose an independent study plan with approval from Donna Faye Burchfield and select an approved thinking partner/mentor.

Credits to be determined between faculty and student.

Variable Credit, 1-3 Credits

The Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski defined his theory of “poor theatre” as the theatre that values the body of the actor and its relation with the spectator. Poor Theatre used the simplest of sets, costumes,lighting and props requiring the actors to employ all of their skills to transform a space into other imaginative worlds.

Where and how does study happen? What is the value of study and how do we recognize that value? What does it mean to think of our study of dance and performance as an encounter and how might that thinking offer up a chance for one to pay attention differently? Is it different from research?  Or, as Kevin Quashie suggests, does it perhaps re-situate the activities of research, scholarship, teaching and practice in an important way? These Labs take the form of intensive workshops and/or lectures.

Variable Credit, 1-2 Credits

This topic driven seminar focuses on current developments within the field of dance and performance. Students will learn to think of dance and performance through their own embodied experiences and by placing dance, movement, and performance in wider disciplinary, cultural and global contexts.

During this course, students will begin to reflect, gather, articulate, and compose their extensive body of professional work in the field of dance by organizing this work into a text which will be bound. The portfolio is developed to include a thoughtful and critically developed artist statement, current CV, written narratives of their work, press & public reviews, and a list of any grants, honorariums and/or fellowships along with the encouragement of a creative approach to sharing the emergence of themselves as dance artists.

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.

This course is designed to assist graduate students with the research and development of their new work. The weekly format is determined with the students. In class, they show works-in-progress, try out ideas with their colleagues, and discuss issues involved in their creative processes. Though the class meets only once a week, students are expected to spend considerable time each week in active, ongoing creative research; their independent projects will be presented to the public, either formally or informally, by the end of the term.

Graduate Teaching Fellows in Dance are integrated into the dance program as teaching assistants. In consultation with their academic advisors and the dance faculty, MFA candidates develop an assistantship schedule of approximately ten hours weekly; the courses they develop and teach are listed in the curriculum. All Teaching Fellows bring their own professional histories and contribute their own manners of teaching. Outside of listed class times, TBD, the Teaching Fellows will meet to discuss their courses with the designated faculty and with each other.

In this course students will learn to use social science statistics to test their own research questions, while becoming more educated consumers of statistical analyses presented in research and news sources. Students will employ various inferential statistics techniques commonly used in social science, such as confidence intervals, t-tests, chi-square testing, correlation, ANOVA, and regression. Students will manage and analyze data using the Stata statistical software package.

The course is designed for students with no prior string instrument experience. Admission is on a first come first serve basis. Classes will be individual (usually 20-25 min. long). Daily practice (10-15 min.) is expected so students can become familiar and comfortable with the instrument.

The course is for intermediate to advanced students.
Students are expected to practice daily (minimum of 45 minutes). End-of-semester performance is required.

Instrumental Study on Guitar. Continued studies from Beginning Guitar. Advanced study in fret-board harmony and theory, play in different tunings, increase chord vocabulary and repertoire.

For the experienced (3+years of playing) violinist/violist. Lessons in traditional styles of fiddling – Quebecois, New England, Southern Appalachian, Scandinavian, Cajun, Irish, and Scottish. This course is designed to heighten awareness of the variety of ways the violin is played regionally and socially in North America (and indeed around the world) and to give practical music skills for furthering personal music making. Students will be expected to perform at Music Workshop, or as part of a concert, in ensemble and/or solo.

Join a public dialogue about global contemporary art and ideas! Each year the New York nonprofit apexart holds an open call for curatorial proposals. Out of hundreds of submissions from around the world, three are chosen to become apexart exhibitions through an online jury process. Students in this class will be part of the jury. Initial readings and assignments will address the history of New York nonprofit spaces and apexart’s position within that landscape over three decades.

Whose class is this anyway? Yours! Improv is for everyone—just like life, it’s all about making it up as we go.

In this course, we’ll explore the fundamentals of improvisation through high-energy theater games, pattern and rhythm exercises, and ensemble-building activities. We’ll dive into character, object, and environment work while staying grounded, truthful, and spontaneous.

This lab class is structured for students who are registered for CER2208 CUPS: Slip Casting and Mold Making to achieve production goals. The two-hour mandatory lab will be guided by the faculty so that students can receive technical guidance and adequate support to establish their studio production practices and expand their knowledge and creative capacities. 

This lab class is structured for students who have completed CER2208 CUPS: Slip Casting and Mold Making (or equivalent introductory mold making and slip casting courses) to achieve independent production goals to create a series of  ceramic functional ware (cups). The two-hour weekly lab will be guided by the faculty so that students can receive technical guidance and adequate support to establish their studio production practices and expand their knowledge and creative capacities. 

“It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his epitaph to the Jazz Age in 1931. It was something else too: a social and literary revolution fueled by new communications technology, mass popular entertainment, Jazz and the Blues, and a bold “collaborative energy” (Ann Douglas) between the Black artists of the Harlem Renaissance and the predominantly white figures who were grouped together as the Lost Generation.

In this course we will undertake a comprehensive survey of American Transcendentalism through a close examination of the major writings from this tumultuous period. We will read the major figures (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau), as well as a host of lesser known members of the Transcendental Club (Orestes Brownson, Ellery Channing, poet Jones Very). We will also read some of the most withering critiques that the movement inspired, including Nathaniel Hawthorne’s satiric novel of the Utopian Brook Farm community, The Blithedale Romance.

This course is intended for students with some playing and reading experience, who have passed Piano Lab I or its equivalent. The goals of this course are to gain ease and dexterity at the keyboard, further developing a confident piano technique, musical expression, and the skill of reading musical notation. Students will expand upon a repertoire of scales and chords. They will study and learn to perform selected compositions.

Individual private piano lessons for more advanced students. Audition required. A weekly 45 minute lesson time is arranged with the instructor.

Have you been thinking about learning to play the piano? Perhaps you have a little experience from childhood and want to get back into it? Do you want to learn to read sheet music and understand the basics of music theory? Maybe you are completely new to playing an instrument, and want to give it a try?

If you answered yes, then Piano Lab I might be right for you.

Lessons are given on a one on one basis. Each lesson is 20-25 minute-long. This course is for beginner’s only.

Have you been thinking about learning to play the piano? Are you completely new to playing an instrument and want to give it a try? Do you have a little experience from childhood and want to get back into it? Are you a singer, songwriter, producer, or composer who wants to know how to accompany themselves, learn to read sheet music and chord symbols, and understand the basics of music theory?

If you answered yes, then Piano Lab I might be right for you.

Chemistry 3 focuses on the nature and pathways of organic reactions: what the steps are, how we experimentally determine them, and how we can use them to solve practical problems, such as the synthesis of a drug, or understanding the action of an enzyme. Emphasis will be using the general principles of nucleo- and and electrophilicity to provide a logical framework for understanding substitution, addition, elimination and reactions involving carbonyl groups. Chemical kinetics will also be a topic of study because of the insights it provides for reaction mechanisms.

This course is the first of a four-course chemistry sequence covering general, organic and biochemistry. Students do not need to take the entire sequence. We will focus on introductory chemical principles, including atomic theory, classical and quantum bonding concepts, molecular structure, organic functional groups, and the relationship between structure and properties. The class will have lecture/discussion meetings at which we will critically examine the major concepts of reading assignments, discuss articles, and review some of the current developments of the field.

This course will explore the construction and experience of gender and sexuality in the Middle East through a performative lens. Drawing on research in ethnomusicology, queer and gender studies, anthropology and Middle Eastern history, the course will examine performance (music, dance, theater, poetry and more) as a process of representation, assertion, and sometimes transgression of sexuality and gender identities. This course will delve into the ways that performance, gender, and sexuality relate to ethnicity, nationalism, modernity, colonialism, and religion.

We will study and perform from the string band traditions of rural America. Nova Scotia, Quebecois, Irish, New England, Scandinavian, African-American dance and ballad traditions. In addition, these will be experienced with listening, practice (weekly group rehearsals outside of class), and performing components. Emphasis on ensemble intuition, playing by ear, and lifetime personal music making skills (transposition, harmonizing, etc.).

For students doing work-study or internships, we will focus on three core areas of professionalization. First, each week will journal our work weeks, discussing and sharing our work experiences in a round-table. Second, we will build our professionalization skills, especially networking (in person and on LinkedIn), resume writing, and doing practice interviews. Finally, we will work on writing 5-year plans, to help us figure out where we’d like to be a few years after graduation. More specifically

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.

Viewed from the outside, the French-speaking world offers enticing images of beauty, pleasure, and freedom. From the inside, however, it is a complicated, often contradictory world where implicit codes and values shape the most basic aspects of daily life. This course will give you an insider’s perspective on a cultural and communicative system whose ideas, customs, and belief systems are surprisingly different from your own.

This rigorous course provides a comprehensive introduction of the nervous system, including its structure, function, and development. Students will explore the principles of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that allow neurons and other specialized nervous cells to detect, encode, and transmit information; including signaling, synaptic transmission, and neuroplasticity.

Modern Guitar is a one on one private lesson.  Occasionally if two students are about the same level the class will accommodate two students at a time.

It is expected that a firm grasp of all the concepts taught in Beginning and Intermediate Guitar are fully understood.

If you haven’t taken these classes you would have to audition to receive the instructors permission to demonstrate skills.

Correct posture for playing the guitar Several approaches to tuning the guitar

Twelve week study of twelve different guitarists of varying styles for awareness of the history of the guitar and the various styles the instrument is capable of. Enhances listening skills.

Finger independence and strength exercises. Attaching finger skills and independence to the brain.

Instrumental Study on Guitar.  Continued studies from Beginning Guitar. Advanced study in fret-board harmony and theory.

“Have you eaten yet?” This common Chinese greeting is just one of many common phrases that shows the centrality of food to Taiwanese and Chinese culture. In this course we will focus on the theme of Chinese and Taiwanese food and dining culture as an entrée into the study of Chinese language and culture. As Chinese grammar is very simple with no verb conjugation, no plural, no gender, no articles or subject and object forms, it is very easy to speak Chinese.

In terms of public action, Ganas remains a community-driven, cross-cultural association that offers students volunteer opportunities to engage with the predominantly undocumented Latine migrant worker population. We maintain relationships with local organizations and members while developing new ones, along with more conventional classes and readings. Over the past couple of years, it has ballooned into a range of simultaneous activities that are seemingly happening all of the time, with students very much at the center of said impetus.

This course addresses the theories, methods, ethics, and actual outcomes of language documentation, revitalization, and reclamation work. Students will examine the causes and consequences of language endangerment, strategies for revitalization, and community-led initiatives in reclaiming linguistic and cultural heritage. Case studies from around the world will provide insight into real-world applications of language work and the diversity in form that this work takes depending on context.

French literature and film have always reciprocally inspired one another – as early as 1897, Lumière represented the main characters of Hugo’s Les Misérables. This course will offer students the opportunity to analyze literary representations of women and their film adaptations in terms of intermediality and intertextuality. Adaptations will include: La Princesse de Clèves (La Fayette/Sauder), La Religieuse (Diderot/Rivette), La Noire de… (Sembène/Sembène), La Prisonnière/La Captive (Proust/Akerman). Students will focus on various adaptation strategies and approaches.

The Scriptorium, a “place for writing,” is a class for writers interested in improving their critical essay-writing skills. We will read to write and write to read. Much of our time will be occupied with writing and revising—essai means “trial” or “attempt”—as we work to create new habits and productive strategies for analytical writing.

Rakugo is one of the traditional Japanese art and storytelling entertainment that became extremely popular during the Edo period (1603-1868).  Rakugo is a rather unique storytelling performance because a storyteller sits on a seat on the stage called “��Ǵdz���” and tells humorous stories without standing up from the seat.  Moreover, the storytellers narrate and play various characters by changing their voice, pitch, tone, facial expressions, and physical movements.