# TDM90DR Learning Lab Project Overview


**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](https://www.jessistegall.com/)** held a joint fellowship as Teaching Fellow for Harvard Dance Project and a Media & Design Fellow at the [Learning Lab](https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/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:

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## 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**

Through filming rehearsals and shows, as well as student & choreographer interviews, this film will capture the experience of participating in the Harvard Dance Project over the course of the semester, tracking shifts in learning for student, the evolution of choreographic research in the classroom, and the community building found in the HDP April production.

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* ### **Documenting individual & collective learning shifts**

Included in the film but existing as a project of their own, student interviews were conducted at beginning & end of semester. Questions at the beginning of the semester asked them about their backgrounds in dance, identities as artists, hopes for the course, connections between their dance life and other studies, and philosophies around shared movement (as aligned with course objectives). At the end of the semester, students are able to watch their original answers from the first interview, and respond with how their thinking, feelings, and understandings have shifted througout the semester. Both interviews are edited together as a filmed document of learning outcomes and student experiences.

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**Only one round of interviews have been conducted thus far. The second round is scheduled to be filmed the first week of may. These interviews are by volunteer - they are not a course requirement.

* ### **HDP philosophy and aims**

A filmed Interview with LROD gives us insight into her approach to teaching Harvard Dance Project, her pedagogical aims and learning objectives for Spring 2022, reflection on the emergent process this semester, and HDP's partnership with the Learning Lab.

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# *Still in process, the final film will be equal part about the course itself as well as an in-depth look into this Spring's production.*

Promo:

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## Dance on Camera Workshops

Jessi brought the Harvard Dance Project students to the Learning Lab for a workshop aimed at providing students 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.

**Gif: Jessi giving HDP students an interactive lecture on history of dance on camera**

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Objectives were to:
1. Familiarize students with basic camera literacy
3. Make visible the historical trajectory of dance on camera, sharing examples from the earliest forms of motion-capture to contemporary dance films
5. Experiment with pairing movement prompts with camera prompts
6. Familiarize students with basic editing literacy
7. Create two filmed studies for LROD's movement phrase

After learning about the history of dance on camera and the different approaches used today, students learned to use static shots and moving shots to capture dance. Then, students were placed into two teams. One team was tasked with using the green screen and static shots to create a "movement library" of a shared dance phrase from class and create an installation. The other team was tasked with using the same phrase to create an "experimental dance film" using moving shots and different locations around the building. Team leaders Jessi + Marlon helped the students edit their footage into a final output and had each team present their project to each other.

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## Harvard Dance Project Show

The Harvard Dance Project season culminates in a performance production showcasing the work developed with the resident choreographers.

After our workshop with HDP, Jessi, LROD, and Marlon dreamed about ways to incorporate the student's research with film into the show. We brought back the students for a second shoot to formally record their movement-breakdowns in front of the green screen. This footage was used to create digital media for the show in two forms: projections (in the show) and a lobby installation (pre and post-show).

### Projections

From the green screen shoot with students, we were able to create projections to be used during LROD's piece, to make visible the relationship between the developed work on stage and the foundational movement vocabularies they were developed from.

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### Lobby Installation

We also used the green screen footage to create a lobby installation that displayed our deconstructed movement libraries from key phrases in LROD's choreography. This installation allowed us to reimagine what is possible with this choreography, bringing the movement into new dimensions and experimenting with different lenses through which to receive dance.

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The installation featured looping videos of individual movement sections and augmented layering to create full phrases. We also had one screen looping through the dancers' names and a "reality TV" moment that gave the audience a peek into each dancers' personality and movement expression.

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### Printed Materials

Included in the lobby installation were materials for audience members to take with them, including buttons with stills from rehearsal, the learning lab workshop, and TDM + HDP logos, as well as postcards that each featured an HDP student in their dancing their "signature" gesture from the show, displayed through a series of consecutive stills.


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# Reflections & Future Directions

## Key Takeaways

* **Dual fellowship provided conditions for collaboration:**

* One of the major components that made this project successful was having Jessi embedded in the course. Her teaching fellowship with TDM90DR allowed her to understand the process, aims, and possibilities of this course better than someone viewing from the outside.

- **Emergent properties to this project opened up new avenues of learning:**
- Having Jessi embedded in the class created new layers to the project that ended up enriching the student's learning experiences. She was able to assess the shifting needs and directions of the class and create additional oppotunities for students to deepen their relationship to the material. Emergent properties included dance-on-camera workshops, developing grammars of movement that deconstruct expressive choreography into formal sections, making the process visible at the show itself, and experimenting with projections as a mode of integrating live performance and digital dance research. We see those in the final products and the final interviews as well.

* **Student Interviews have a meta-cognitive purpose of crystallizing learning obectives and encouraging students to reflect on their goals, progress, and learning in the course**

* **Reciprocal influence in final products**

## Future Directions

Our vision is to expand these experimental documentation practices into other areas of TDM. We are particularly interested in exploring how these meta-cognitive reflection methods can be applied in performance-based learning spaces in order to activate student agency in analyzing and synthesizing their creative growth & development.

As a pilot, one model is to choose 3 TDM courses (theatre-based, dance-based, and media-based) and apply our documentation and media-research methods through:

* 10-15 minute process films
* digital databases of student work
* virtual online galleries
* short-films as student projects
* printed materials (zines, buttons)
* projection-based projects

**Our fellow on this project would be [Jessi Stegall](https://www.jessistegall.com/)**

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First steps would be to:

* hire jessi as departmental fellow at TDM
* identify courses that could be a good fit for LL partnership
* connect with course faculty to gauge interest
* meet with faculty to identify where learning lab integration fits best, identify tools of interest (film, virtual galleries, digital portfolio, zines, projections, performance)