Chasing Dance History
Credits: 1.5
Core course for Second Year
Shani Tamari Matan
Shani Tamari Matan is a dancer, choreographer, and dance teacher. She is a graduate of the School of Visual Theater, holds a B.Dance and M.Dance degree from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, where she also teaches. She complements her research at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in the folklore research department. Shani writes about dance as a research, interpretive, and critical object in various platforms and is a member of the dance department at the Ministry of Culture.
The visual object of Dance appears and disappears. One moment we raise our hand, and the next, it’s no longer there. Dance leaves behind remnants: moving or frozen photographs, various types of texts, movement notation, music, posters, open calls, costumes, set designs, and more.
In this course, we will chase and learn. We will trace the frequent changes that occured to the body itself, to body perceptions, and to its representations over the years. We will familiarize ourselves with different choreographic approaches and the cultural theories that nourish them. We will explore a wide range of dance pieces, from court ballet of the Renaissance to contemporary conceptual dance. We will examine how the local dance scene, rich but relatively young, responded to these changes.
