In this project-based course, we will collectively engage creative documentation, written, discursive and embodied practices in the production of an online zine and podcast in order to explore the challenges of documenting dance processes, live performance, and the creative communities that gather around these practices.

Attuning ourselves to the ephemera that surround and imbue live, embodied forms, we will consider the multi-sensory, affective, and collective modes through which dance is activated and activates in order to re-configure our understanding of the archive not as a static record of the past, but a protean, contestable, multivalent, and embodied process.

Throughout the course we will reflect on historical and contemporary materials and texts as we critically engage questions around what and who comes to have significance and value through the archive and how an artist’s participation in the archive can be employed as a method for reflecting on and deepening engagement with one’s own work and the work of others. How might these processes be used as critical tools for deepening and expanding one’s own creative process while contributing to discourse in the field and reflection on contemporary issues? Students will be expected to write regularly. Time in class will be spent workshopping each other’s work, responding to readings, and working collaboratively to interview visiting artists and guests and share content.