mardi 24 septembre 2013

Séminaires (RU)

The School of Creative Arts, Film & Media at the University of Portsmouth
is pleased to invite you to a public lecture by Professor Mary Jo Lodge, 
Associate Professor of English and Theatre at Lafayette College in Easton, 
Pennsylvania, USA 


Date: Thursday 3 October 2013
Time: 5pm
Venue: St George’s Building Room 0.20, 141 High Street, Portsmouth PO1 2HY
Admission: free

Dance Breaks, Dream Ballets and Other Perils of the Musical: An Analysis of 
Form, Function and Liminality in Dance in Musicals

The Broadway musical is often roundly critiqued because its characters
suddenly begin to sing and/or dance. These moments of transition - ones
which move from one mode of communication to another (singing to dancing,
for example) are defining ones for musicals and are fraught with challenges
for their creators. In this essay, I examine those transitional moments in
representative stage and screen musicals which involve dance – ones in
which characters begin dancing and stop singing, typically mid-song (the
dance break), or sometimes mid-show (the dream ballet). I explore the ways
in which dance is used as a mode of communication in various musicals and
the ways in which certain shows navigate both the introduction of dance
into a song or show, and the transitions, after a dance ends, back to song
or speech. I explore specific musicals that have been successful in
introducing choreographed movement into a show in order to theorize about
how other musicals might achieve this. I suggest that when dance in
musicals works well, creative teams usually have employed one of three
approaches: using dance with a diegetic function, using dance in a
deliberately unrealistic way, or using dance in a pre-integration
(structurally speaking) fashion. For those musicals with a less successful
justification of dance written in to their structure, I suggest that
choreographers most often try to manufacture a diegetic approach to dance
sequences. Regardless, however, all of these approaches to dance in the
musical require careful handling of the shifts between the various modes of
communication, and specifically require thoughtful analysis of how dance is
used and how the liminal spaces will be addressed. If history is any
indication, it seems that taking great care in crafting these dance moments
can yield a musical that achieves both creative and commercial success.

Mary Jo Lodge is an associate professor of English and Theatre at Lafayette
College in Easton, Pennsylvania, USA, an active musical theater performer,
director, and choreographer. Mary Jo previously taught at Central Michigan
University and founded their B.F.A. musical theater program. She holds a
Ph.D. in theater from Bowling Green State University, an M.A. in theater
from Villanova University, and an undergraduate performance degree from
Catholic University. She has directed and choreographed numerous
professional, college and summer stock productions, including Arabian
Nights, Rent and A Thousand Cranes. She is also active internationally as
a musical theater scholar, and has recently published work on the
director/choreographer, the television musical and dance in the musical.
This term, she is a Fulbright scholar to the UK, and will be teaching a
course in American musical theater at Roehampton University in London and
conducting research on British musicals for her book, “On Bursting In to
Song and other Perils of the Musical”.

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Middlesex University, Performing Arts Department
The Burroughs, Hendon, London, 
On Methodology*
Part of the research seminar series by Professor Mark Franko

Friday 13th and Saturday 14th Sept, 2013

Réservation obligatoire : Nicholas Nikeforou, n.nikeforou@mdx.ac.uk

Friday 13th Sept: 2-5pm: Foucault and Las Meninas

 We explore the chapter “Las Meninas” from *The Order of Things* (*Lesmots et les choses*) by Michel Foucault. What sort of methodologies does
 this analysis of the Velasquez painting (1636) suggest for dance and
 theatre studies? What concept of representation does Foucault present and
 why does he rely on a dramaturgical reading of the painting, and to what
 effect? Because this text implies opposition to Merleau-Ponty, we read an
essay by Claude Lefort – also a student of Merleau-Ponty – which proposes a
different way of dealing with power and representation.

 *Readings:* Michel Foucault, “Las Meninas” in *The Order of Things. An
 Archaeology of the Human Sciences *(New York: Vintage, 1973): 3-16
 Claude Lefort, “The Image of the Body and Totalitarianism” in John B.
Thompson, editor, *The Political Forms of Modern Society. Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism* (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986): 292-306.

Saturday, 14th Sept: 2-5pm: Derrida and Grammatology
 How is Derrida’s conception of writing useful for Dance Studies? We read pages 3-65 of *Of Grammatology*, which contains one of the only passages in his oeuvre where Derrida makes an explicit connection between writing and choreography. We also examine scholarship that comments on and/or uses Derridean principles (Brandstetter; Lepecki).

*Readings: *Jacques Derrida, *Of Grammatology* translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976): 3-65.  Gabrielle Brandstetter, *“*Political Body Spaces in Performances of  William Forsythe” in *Performative Body Spaces: Corporeal Topographies in  Literature, Theatre, Dance, and the Visual Arts* edited by Marlius Alensleben (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2010).  André Lepecki, “Inscribing Dance,” in *Of The Presence of the Body. Essays on Dance and Performance Theory* edited by André Lepecki (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2004): 124-139.

Mark Franko* is Professor of Dance and Coordinator of Graduate Programs at Temple University (Philadelphia) and Professor of Visual and Performance  Studies at Middlesex. His publications include *Martha Graham in Love and War: the Life in the Work*, *Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body*, *Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics*, *The Work of Dance: Labor, Movement and Identity in the 1930s, *and* Excursion for Miracles: Paul Sanasardo, Donya Feuer and Studio for Dance (1955-1964)*. He is editor of *Dance Research Journal*, and founding editor of the Oxford Studies in Dance Theory book series. He edited *Ritual and Event: Interdisciplinary Perspectives* and co-edited *Acting on the Past: Historical Performance Across the Disciplines. *Recipient of the 2011 Outstanding Scholarly Research in Dance from the Congress on Research in Dance, Franko’s research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Getty Center for Research in the Arts and Humanities. The American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the Humanities Institute UC Irvine, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught at Columbia University, Princeton University, Purdue University, and the University of California Santa Cruz where he is currently emeritus; he was Valeska Gert Visiting Professor of Dance and Performance at the Institut für Theaterwissenschaf,t Freie Universität Berlin, and Visiting Professor at NYU Performance Studies, Bard College, Paris 8, Université de Nice, and the Catholic University of Leuven. His books have been translated into French, Italian, and Slovenian.

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