Performance Art: Level 1

Performance Art

Course Goal: The goal of this course is to provide students with the opportunity to grow themselves artistically without sacrificing time during class devoted to developing strength and skill perfection. This course will discuss musicality, ground movement, character development, performance expectations, ambiance vs choreography, etc.

Although instructors work performance exercises into their coursework, some students find it frustrating because they feel they are attending classes to work on strength, stamina, and skills, not to necessarily grow themselves as performance artists. In this course, you will use the skills you already have to work on performance exercises. This course will also provide newer students a safe space to develop pieces for revues as well as to work on flows for ambiance performances.

Course sampling:

• Musicality

• Taking different flows and placing them to different songs, changing tempo, mood, etc

• Discussing music theory and pairing with movement–round sounds vs drop sounds, etc

• Having students pick songs for one another to push students past comfort zones

• Ground movement

• Incorporating ground movement throughout an aerial piece

• Taking grace from the air to the ground

• Using ground movement to build a character/story

• Character development

• Emotion challenges (perform to this song in a funny way, etc)

• Work together to build a group piece around a single story line

• Movement theory

• Discuss different movement theories (Del Sarte, Contemporary, Classic Circus)