Course description

This course explores dance across multiple stages—TikTok videos, concert halls, streets—to assess how people create, sustain, and challenge markers of difference (race, gender, sexuality, ability, and class). How is dance appreciation different from appropriation? What are dancing avatars in video games allowed to do that real persons are not? We will examine genres such as k-pop, hip hop, salsa, modern dance, and ballroom as we develop the tools necessary for viewing dance, analyzing it, and understanding its place in larger social, cultural, historical, and political structures. We will explore how markers of difference affect the practice and the reception of dance forms, and, in turn, how dance helps shape representations of identities.

Previous performance experience is not necessary.

Winter 2025: Online course

Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz
Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz
Assistant Professor of Performing and Media Arts