27136 - History of Dance and Movement Arts

Academic Year 2018/2019

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in Drama, Art and Music Studies (cod. 0956)

Learning outcomes

By the end of this course, students will:

– acquire a basic knowledge of the history of the dance and the arts of the movement in the western theatrical culture, with special reference to the contemporary times and the European and Italian context;

– learn and be able to use some analysis methodologies of the dance performance;

– be able to apply the competences and tools acquired during the course to the cultural diffusion


Course contents

This course gives an outline of the history of the theatrical dance, beginning from the elaborate spectacular forms within the Renaissance Italian courts; through the practices that confirm and establish theories and techniques of making dance into the theatre between the 17th and the 19th Century; through the revolutions made in the passage to the 20th, up to the variegated multiplicity that characterises the last decades of that century and the first ones of the XXI. More specifically, the second part of the course will focus on contemporary times, through the vision and the analysis of philological reconstructions, contaminated rewritings or radical reinventions made today from known titles such as Giselle (1841), by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot; Swan Lake (1895), by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov; Le sacre du printemps (1913), by Vaclav Nižinskij; Kontakthof (1978), by Pina Bausch. The interest in the rebuilding of existing creations, in fact, is evident, today, not only in the classical-academic repertoire, but also in modern dance, contemporary dance, dance-theatre or post-modern dance, putting into play strong themes such as identity, originality and reproducibility of the work, intellectual property, viewer's eyesight and visions, relationship between past and present, nostalgia, memory, and time.

Readings/Bibliography

To take the final examination (12 credits), attending students are required to study four texts ( "attending students" are those that have attended at least the 70% of the lectures):

 

1) One text among:

- Elena Cervellati, La danza in scena. Storia di un'arte dal Medioevo a oggi, Milano, Bruno Mondadori, 2009;

- Alessandro Pontremoli, Storia della danza dal Medioevo ai giorni nostri, Firenze, Le Lettere, 2002.

 

2) Two texts among:

- Eugenia Casini Ropa, La danza e l'agit-prop. I teatri non-teatrali nella cultra teatrale del primo Novecento, Imola, Cue press, 2016 (I ed. Bologna, Il Mulino, 1988)

- Elena Cervellati, Théophile Gautier e la danza. La rivelazione del corpo nel balletto del XIX secolo, Bologna, CLUEB, 2007

- Annamaria Corea, Raccontar danzando. Forme del balletto inglese nel Novecento, Roma, Sapienza Università Editrice, 2017 (free edition online: http://www.editricesapienza.it/node/7648)

- Vito Di Bernardi - Letizia Gioia Monda (a cura di), Immaginare la danza. Corpi e visioni nell'era digitale, Bologna, Massimiliano Piretti Editore, 2018

- Roberto Giambrone, Pina Bausch. Le coreografie del viaggio, Macerata, Ephemeria, 2008

- Elisa Guzzo Vaccarino, La danza d'arte. Balanchine, Cunningham, Forsythe, Roma, Dino Audino Editore, 2015

- Concetta Lo Iacono, Il danzatore attore, da Noverre a Pina Bausch, Roma, Dino Audino Editore, 2007

- Letizia Gioia Monda, Choreographic bodies. L'esperienza della Motion Bank nel progetto multidisciplinare di Forsythe, Roma, Dino Audino Editore, 2016

- Stefania Onesti, Di passi, di storie e di passioni. Teorie e pratiche del ballo teatrale nel secondo Settecento italiano, Torino, Accademia University Press, 2016

- Elena Randi, La modern dance. Teorie e protagonisti, Roma, Carocci editore, 2018

- Elena Randi, Protagonisti della danza del XX secolo. Poetiche ed eventi scenici, Roma, Carocci editore, 2014

 

3) The reader Elena Cervellati (a cura di), Rifare la danza. Metodologie ed esempi, not yet published, will be substitued by an anthology of texts, all online in a pdf version (or in a printed copy at Copisteria Harpo, via Barberia 4, Bologna):

André Lepecki, Il corpo come archivio. Volontà di ri-mettere-in-azione e vita postuma delle danza, in «Mimesis Journal», n. 1, 2016, pp. 30-52, online: http://journals.openedition.org/mimesis/1109 .

Concetta Lo Iacono, La bambola di Cagliostro. Una storia per immagini di Coppélia ou La Fille aux yeux d'émail, in «Danza e ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni», n. 3, 2012, pp. 35-60, online: https://danzaericerca.unibo.it/article/view/3343/2718 .

Rita Maria Fabris, Femminile/Maschile nel corpo danzante: Il lago dei cigni, in «Danza e ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni», n. 4, 2013, pp. 31-56, online: http://danzaericerca.unibo.it/article/view/4207/3659 .

Veroli, Patrizia, Il Sacre du printemps di Nižinskij, oggi. Le “ricostruzioni” di Millicent Hodson (1987) e Dominique Brun (2014), in Betta, Nicoletta – Rizzuti, Marida, Cento primavere. Ferocità e feracità del Sacre du printemps, Alessandria, Edizioni dell'Orso, 2014, pp. 39-62, online: https://slides.tips/il-sacre-du-printemps-di-nizinskij-oggi-le-ricostruzioni-di-millicent-hodson-198.html .

Annamaria Corea, Romeo e Giulietta. Un perfetto case-study per il balletto narrativo del Novecento, in «Danza e ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni», n. 6, 2015, pp. 19-29, online: https://danzaericerca.unibo.it/article/view/4969 .

Alessandra Sini, Pratiche di sopravvivenza e di dissoluzione. Una testimonianza sulle possibilità di ripresa nelle pratiche coreografiche di Altroteatro e Sistemi dinamici altamente instabili, in «Danza e ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni», n. 7, dicembre 2015, pp. 55-82, online: https://danzaericerca.unibo.it/article/view/5955/5678.

Elena Cervellati, Tra canone e archivio vivente: rifare la “nuova danza italiana”, in Guccini, Gerardo (a cura di), Thinking the Theatre. New Theatrology and Performance Studies. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Torino, 29-30 maggio 2015, Bologna, ALMADL University of Bologna Digital Library, collana “Arti della performance”, 2018, pp. 360-373, online: http://amsacta.unibo.it/5781/ .

Elena Cervellati, Alimentare la presenza. L'Archivio Kazuo Ohno in Italia, in Casari, Matteo – Cervellati, Elena (a cura di), Butō. Prospettive europee e sguardi dal Giappone, Bologna, ALMADL University of Bologna Digital Library, Collana “Arti della performance”, 2015, pp. 67-77, online: http://amsacta.unibo.it/4352/ .

Susanne Franco, Archiviare il futuro. I lasciti di Pina Bausch e Merce Cunningham, in «Danza e ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni», n. 5, dicembre 2014, pp. 97-111, online: https://danzaericerca.unibo.it/article/view/4701/4192 .

Marcella Lista, Play Dead/Fare il morto: danza, musei e le “arti basate sul tempo”, in «Danza e ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni», n. 9, 2017, pp. 11-35, online: https://danzaericerca.unibo.it/article/view/7671

 

To take the final examination, non-attending students ("not attending students" are those who have attended less than 70% of the lectures) are required to go to the examination bringing a list of the shows, viewed through recordings video or live, on which they should be questioned.

In fact, it will be fundamental for the in-depth comprehension of the texts, to integrate the reading with the view of part of the principal performances described in the books, through video recordings available on dvd or online, (youtube, vimeo, numéridanse and similar). Students shall demonstrate the capacity to make references to these visions.

So, it will be necessary to go to the examination having seen:

- for 1), at least La fille mal gardée (1789), by Jean Dauberval; Giselle (1841), by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot; Lo Schiaccianoci (1892), by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov; Apollon musagète (1928), by George Balanchine; Lamentation (1930), by Martha Graham; Points in space (1986), by Merce Cunningham; Blaubart (1977), by Pina Bausch;

- for 2), at least two titles between those cited in every chosen text;

- for 3), at least one title for each paper in the text.

Teaching methods

The lectures will be supported by commented view of the videos and pictures, as well as by meetings with artists and, possibly, attending at live performances. The active participation of the attending students will be solicited suggesting readings and discussions in the classroom.

Assessment methods

The students’ learning outcomes on the history of the dance and the arts of the movement will be verified through an interview concerning the recommended bibliography to verify their ability 1) to move within the key phases of the history of the theatrical dance beginning from the Renaissance and to make specific reference to specific artistic experiences.

It will be assessed as excellent the performance of those students achieving an organic vision of the course contents, the use of a proper specific language, the originality of the reflection as well as the familiarity with the tolls for analysing the History of The Dance and The Arts of The Movement.

It will be assessed as discrete the performance of those students showing mostly mechanical or mnemonic knowledge of the subject, not articulated synthesis and analysis capabilities, a correct but not always appropriate language, as well as a scholastic study of the History of The Dance and The Arts of The Movement. It will be assessed as barely sufficient the performance of those students showing learning gaps, inappropriate language, lack of knowledge of the discipline. It will be assessed as insufficient the performance of those students showing learning gaps, inappropriate language, no orientation within the recommended bibliography and inability to analyse the History of The Dance and The Arts of The Movement.

Teaching tools

Visual documentation through projections of fixed and moving images.

Office hours

See the website of Elena Cervellati