Harvard Dance Project [TDM 90DR] is a production-based course focusing on professional movement exploration, choreography, and process. For the Spring 2022 season, Aysha Upchurch, Jeffrey Page, and LROD were in choreographic residence with the enrolled company at the Harvard Dance Center. The Harvard Dance Project offered the enrolled company an in-depth experience working closely with choreographers’ diverse methods and practices in the dance production universe while simultaneously examining the intersections of dance and performance studies, choreographic processes, and intermedia. The Harvard Dance Project culminated in an end-of-term performance and production experience at Farkas Hall.
In Spring 2022, Jessi Stegall held a joint fellowship as Teaching Fellow for Harvard Dance Project and a Media & Design Fellow at the Learning Lab at Harvard University's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. As a result, the Learning Lab was able to support the Harvard Dance Project in a number of ways:
HDP Process Film-Documentary
For her main project, Jessi + the Learning Lab are creating a 25-30 minute process film that will document the process, ideas, philosophy, and outcomes of HDP in Spring 2022. This film will serve as a thorough archive for HDP, as well as a resource for future studets to be better understand the nature and funtion of this course, especially as it takes new direction under LROD. Film Objectives include:
Documenting creative process + product
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Marlon: What is the Learning Lab? What do you do here?
Jessi, then Marlon: How did the LL come to work with HDP? What were your initial expectations of this project?
Marlon, then Jessi: Why is it important for dance students to interface with technology? How was the student experience shaped by the integration of specific tools and media?
Jessi, then Marlon: *Can you tell me about the workshop you hosted for HDP here at the learning lab? What were the objectives? What did you notice?
Jessi: What resulted from the fact that you worked with HDP as both a TF and an MDF? What became possible as a result?
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Introduction
What were your responsibilities as a teaching fellow for HDP?
literally, practically
Describe a typical week for you in HDP.
Tell me about your rehearsls with:
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For the students' exit interviews, they will be reviewing the footage from their entry interviews and responding with how their answer has changed over time, and answer additional questions that invite them to reflect on key experiences throughout the course.
The interview schedule is as follows:
Date/Time
Location
Name
5/3 9:30AM
Main Studio
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One of the core components of the TDM90DR film project is the "before and after" student interviews. At the beginnnig of the semester, students were interviewed at the LL and asked about their dance backgrounds, interests, philosophies, and goals. Now having completed the course, we are bring students back in for a second round of interviews to watch back their old interviews and share (on camera) how their feelings and ideas have since grown/shifted. We take inspiration for this portion of the project from Billie Eilish's 1-year-apart Vanity Fair Interviews.
Before those second round of interviews happen, we need to edit their original interviews into a format that they can easily watch back. The first steps to these edits are to create time markers for when particular questions are asked. This is the challenge you'll be helping with!
the steps
Find the student interview project in Final Cut
Ask Luke, Casey, Marlon, Jordan, or Christine for the following drives:
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HDP students will opt-in to participate in filmed interviews that track their learning development of three core course objectives:
Dance/Movement Literacy
Students will be able to articulate their thoughts, feelings, and questions about dance and choreographic work, using shared vocabulary and their knowledge of movement discourse. This literacy will be visible in both responding to others' work and ideas as well as in the articulation of one's own ideas and creation.
Individual Artistic Agency
Students will be able to articulate their own creative interests, including themes and questions, mediums, feelings, etc. They will be able to talk about their own inspiration, as well as their strengths in artistic creation. They will understand who they want to be as an artist, with an emphasis on their moral agency as artists.
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Harvard Dance Project [TDM 90DR] is a production-based course focusing on professional movement exploration, choreography, and process. For the Spring 2022 season, Aysha Upchurch, Jeffrey Page, and LROD were in choreographic residence with the enrolled company at the Harvard Dance Center. The Harvard Dance Project offered the enrolled company an in-depth experience working closely with choreographers’ diverse methods and practices in the dance production universe while simultaneously examining the intersections of dance and performance studies, choreographic processes, and intermedia. The Harvard Dance Project culminated in an end-of-term performance and production experience at Farkas Hall.
In Spring 2022, Jessi Stegall held a joint fellowship as Teaching Fellow for Harvard Dance Project and a Media-Design Fellow for the Learning Lab at Harvard University Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. As a result, the Learning Lab was able to support the Harvard Dance Project in a number of ways:
HDP Process Film-Documentary
For her main project, Jessi + the Learning Lab are creating a 25-30 minute process film that will document the process, ideas, philosophy, and outcomes of HDP in Spring 2022. This film will serve as a thorough archive for HDP, as well as a resource for future studets to be better understand the nature and funtion of this course, especially as it takes new direction under LROD. Film Objectives include:
Documenting creative process + product
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Where: LL Studio
When: 3/28/2022 (11:30AM-1:30PM)
Enrollment: 13
Students will come back to the learning lab to shoot footage to be used in their performance production in April in the form of gifs & stills. Because this takes place during rehearsal time, our goal is to get students in and out as quickly as possible so they can join rehearsal when they finish filming.
Desired final outputs
Video installation for lobby
Video projection for performance
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Interview questions:
Introduce yourself
My name is (name), I'm the (title at Harvard), and I'm the director of the Harvard Dance Project for for Spring 2022.
In it's most general form, what is Harvard Dance Project?
Why train students in dance who aren't pursuing dance professionally? What is the value of a dance education at Harvard?
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Harvard Dance Project students were interviewed in early February that aimed to document their current thinking on major themes of the course. At the end of the semester, we will have the students watch these interviews back, and respond to how their thinking has shifted since finishing Harvard Dance Project (see Billie Eilish interview for inspo)
In addition to this larger comparison film, we would like to create shorter edits of these initial interviews that target specific prompts:
1. Single interview compilation
2. Single question compilation
Below is a how-to for editing these compilations and an example of one I have already completed:
Find the timecode - manually mark timecodes in MD
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History of dance + cameras
Filming dance is as old as cinematography itself.
In the late 1800s, Edward Muybridge, a photographer, began a project on the study of motion through photographic documentation, in which he was attempting to "record" movement through capturing a rapid series of photographs, which is what film really is. His first studies were of walking, horsebackriding, and dance.
Roughly ten years later, Loie Fuller, an American actress and dancercombined extravagant silk costumes with multi-coloured lighting in her famed Serpentine Dance, and a rendition of the dance was captured by the Lumière brothers in 1896.
Fast forward to the golden age of cinema, we see dance on camera being mainstreamed through popular movies with dancers like Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers. Fred Astaire also had a particularly strong influence on the way his dances were filmed: he is said to have told his cameraman, “Either I’m gonna dance, or the camera’s gonna dance—and I’m gonna dance.” In most of his films, Astaire’s dance sequences seem as though they’re filmed in one long take, giving the sense that the audience is watching a live performance.
In 1945, Maya Deren, a Ukranian Filmmaker, produced a groundbreaking avant-garde film entitled "A Study in Choreography for Camera." The dancer, Talley Beattly, performs a dance sequence in a variety of settings. Deren's aim was to direct the camera as if it were a dancer, expertly using cutes, carying film speeds, and backwards motion to create a dance that could only exist on film.
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Where: LL Studio
When: 2/28/2022
Enrollment: 13
Jessi is TF for Harvard Dance Project, she will be bringing in the HDP students for a workshop aimed at providing them with basic camera, filming, and editing literacy, and give them an opportunity to create short dance films that deepen their inquiry into the phrase material for LROD's piece.
Objectives are to:
Familiarize students with basic camera literacy
Distinguish between "Dance on Camera" and "Dance for Camera"
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Inspiration videos:
[Limon Company @ MANCC](https://mancc.org/artists/limn-dance-
company/)
Kyle Abraham @ MANCC
Liz Lerman @ MANCC
Ilya Vidrin Partnering — Not the kind of film we want, but I like the shots (I filmed them lol)
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