This course will explore an Africanist worldview by interrogating dance, power, and privilege in America. Over a series of directed readings, videos, lecture-discussions, master classes and a live performance experience, students will examine multiple African / African American aesthetic possibilities. This approach will frame “black dance” as a complex sociopolitical activity made public through various agendas of race, creed, national origin, sexuality, and gender. Writing, discussions, and practice-based epistemologies (dancing) will facilitate an appropriate balance between embodied knowledge and traditional research methodologies. Students may sample traditional African, Jazz, Hip-hop, Contemporary and/or other appropriate forms. Success in this course will be assessed through weekly reflective essays, one presentation, and one or two 5-7-page papers. No dance experience necessary.
We will be dancing a lot and the course meets 9am-2pm daily.
This course is eligible for honors credit through Hutton Honors College.
Catalog Information:
AAAD-A 219
HISTORY OF BLACK DANCE
Stafford C. Berry, Jr., MFA, is an accomplished artist, educator, activist, and scholar of African-rooted dance, theatre, and aesthetics. He is the Director of the Indiana University African American Dance Company (AADC). He is certified in Umfundalai Contemporary African Dance and a licensed Zumba® Instructor. Mr. Berry has toured nationally, and internationally to Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. He was the Associate Artistic Director of Baba Chuck Davis' internationally acclaimed African American Dance Ensemble for 14 years; former Co-Director of The Berry & Nance Dance Project; and faculty at the American Dance Festival for 5 years. Mr. Berry’s artistic work is concerned with black male discourse, black folks’ embodied epistemologies, and “making space” for African American, Lgbtqia+, “weirdos,” and disempowered communities. His recent work includes: Double-dutch and Broken Levees ‘2017, a dance about urban cultural play and climate change, set to the music of jazz virtuoso, Wynton Marsalis, and hOw to bUILD a hOuse, ‘2017, a work that juxtaposes the construction of a physical dwelling with the making of a familial, queer safe-space, for which Mr. Berry received the Greater Columbus (Ohio) Arts Council’s prestigious Choreographer’s Fellowship. Wawa Aba ‘2013 his work on the world-class Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, continues to tour nationally and internationally as an audience favorite. Now in his third year as Professor of Practice in both African American and African Diaspora Studies and Theatre, Drama, and Contemporary Dance at IU, Mr. Berry has made several dances for both departments, including a restaged Good Game, Yo!, a dance about black male relationships, at the 2018 American Dance Guild Showcase Festival in New York City.
This class is not approved for the IU Bloomington General Education Program.
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