DAN 211 - Modern Dance 2 / Fall 2025

     REVIEW Watch the following video. Analysis Students discuss among themselves Mary Wigman's ideas about dance. Using the questions below as prompts, they write about them and post their reflections on Discussion Board. Mary Wigman Question 1 Write your response to Wigman's dance performance in this video. I    Unit: Expressionist Dance Theme: Ceremonies, Movement, Dance and Word   II Introduction    Kurt Jooss and Mary Wigman were both students of Rudolph Laban. While Wigman left Laban and created her own movement theory, Jooss continued collaborating with Laban until he created his own company.  Kurt's most international piece, The Green Table, was inspired by the medieval artwork “Lubeck’s Dance of Death” and Germany’s collapsed economy.    III Learning Objectives   Understand the application of the idea of " dance as a ceremony" Explain how " naturalistic movement, large-scale unison and characterization" bring ...

          I   Unit: Relationship Theme: Partnering   II Introduction  Today we will review Wigman's concept of technique which differ from Laban's ideas about the organization of movement in space. Thus, her new dance sought to gain freedom of movement, which is why the dancers focused on expressing their emotions more than on the artistic technique. Today, we will address "partner dances", which are dances whose basic choreography involves coordinated dancing of two partners , as opposed to individuals dancing alone or individually in a non-coordinated manner, and as opposed to groups of people dancing simultaneously in a coordinated manner. We will try to turn partner dance into expressionist.       III Learning Objectives Understand the application of the idea of " dance discovering its own terms of expression " (1) Explain how "liberation from traditional, predetermined steps" helps the dancer to develop body expr...

  Review I Concepts Developed by Rudolff Laban   Choreutics: Laban defined choreutics as “the practical study of harmonized movement.” Latter day colleagues of Laban’s, such as Valerie Preston-Dunlop and Vera Maletic, have delineated Choreutics respectively as the “spatial organization for dance” and “the theory and practice of ordering movement in space.”   Kinesphere :  “the sphere around the body whose periphery can be reached by easily extended limbs without stepping away from that place which is the point of support when standing on one foot” (1966, p.10). This spherical space around our body shifts as soon as we shift our weight. It is also the first area of movement exploration before going into “space in general”. It follows anatomical limitations, being actually more elliptic than spherical as constitutionally, the average body has a wider area of reach forward than backward. Visibly speaking the kinesphere stays invisible until the moment we mo...

  Review   Choreutics  The Cube  Trace Forms Diagonal Movement Scales  Kinesphere Art Nouveau  Elements of Dance: Space (levels, directions, focus, pathways, size)   Breath patterning assists the coordination of the internal body that is vital in human movement. Functionally, every inhalation and exhalation is a complex event Patterns of Body Connectivity 4 Components of Human Movement 8 Efforts             I   Unit: Body Theme: Mary Wigman' Expressionism   II Introduction  Today we will review Wigman's concept of body expression. Her ideas about the liberation of dance from traditional, predetermined steps by the utilization of improvisation and the honoring of an internal sense of motion, rhythm and expressive gesture grew in depth and sophistication as Wigman studied and collaborated with Rudolf von Laban from 1913-1919.(1) Mary Wigman (born November 13, 1886, Hanover, Germany—died Septembe...