ART 382 - Belle Ribicoff Seminar

Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)

Topic for 2015/16b: Dancers, Artworks, and People in the Galleries. This seminar explores the relationship of art, dance, and film in the contemporary moment. We begin, however, with Merce Cunningham’s collaborations with artist Robert Rauschenberg and filmmaker Charles Atlas, followed by the connections between the Judson Dance Theater and the art world of the early 1960s, particularly that of Andy Warhol’s Factory and minimal sculptors. We see and discuss the work of choreographers collaborating with artists and within art spaces, and we also watch films in which dances were made specifically for the camera or in collaboration with filmmakers. It is often these films-Babette Mangolte’s film of Trisha Brown’s Watermoter, Tacita Dean’s film installation of Cunningham’s Craneway Event, Thierry de Mey’s film of Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s Violin Phase, for example-that we now see when we see dance in museums. Are we then seeing dances or something else altogether? Mr. Crimp.

Prerequisite: permission of the instructor.

Six meetings to be held on consecutive Friday afternoons after spring break. Some classes will meet at Vassar; most will take place in New York City. Transportation will be provided. Second six-week course.

One 2-hour period.