FRS 001Z - Sec. 001 - (2 units) - CRN 83322 - M 5:10-7:00 pm - 115 Wright Bldg.
Dance, Body and the Hollywood Musical

Instructor: Barbara Sellers-Young, Department of Theatre & Dance, College of Letters and Science

Description: Film musicals have from the beginning of the 20 Century combined the spectacle of the dancing body with stories that have captured the public's imagination. Combining classic (Fred Astaire, Showboat) and contemporary films (West Side Story/Flower Drum Song/Evita), this course explores central issues of the Hollywood musical, including the musical's significance as a genre and the musical's representation of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality through the dancing body. Students will combine group and individual analysis of the dance sequences in the films to investigate the implications of the body's representation with the film's narrative structure and its historical context. The goals of the seminar are: 1) An ability to analyze the communication styles of the dancing body and its related representations of gender, race, and identity; 2) An exploration of the relationship between the representational history of the body in the 20 century, Hollywood musicals, and related social contexts; 3) An appreciation of how choreographers transform popular dance styles into representations of social relationships.

Textbook: Steve Cohan (Ed.) Hollywood Musicals Film Reader

Format: The seminar will meet for two hours each week for eight weeks. The time will be divided between informal lecture presentations, viewing clips of films, discussion and student presentations. Grading: Students will be given a letter grade based on the quality of their participation, their ability to discuss the works and the substance of their comments (total of 200 points or 20% of the grade). There will also be one group presentation and one five-page essay assignment. Each is worth 400 points for a total of 800 points or 80% of the grade.

About the Instructor:
Barbara Sellers-Young is Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance. She is a dancer, choreographer, director, scholar whose work has been performed at the Broadway Performance Hall (Seattle), Lincoln Hall (Portland), Sacramento Theatre Company, and at Manchester Metropolitan University (England). She has taught workshops and classes in dance and movement for the Association of Theatre in Higher Education, Manchester Metropolitan University and the International College in Beijing. She is the author of Teaching Personality with Gracefulness (published in 1993), a discussion of Kanriye Fujima's life and teaching of Nihon Buyo in the United States, and of Breathing, Movement, Exploration (Applause Books 2001).