DRAM7305 Song and Dance

2019

4.5

1 x 1-hour lecture weekly
1 x 1-hour seminar weekly
1 x 2-hour film screening weekly

1 Admission into HBA-Bachelor of Arts (Honours)
1a Admission into HBCACW-Bachelor of Creative Arts (Honours) (Creative Writing)
1b Admission into HBCADR-Bachelor of Creative Arts (Honours) (Drama)
1c Admission into HBCASM-Bachelor of Creative Arts (Honours) (Screen and Media)
1d Admission into GDPCACW-Graduate Diploma in Creative Arts (Creative Writing)
1e Admission into GDPCADR-Graduate Diploma in Creative Arts (Drama)
1f Admission into GDPCASP-Graduate Diploma in Creative Arts (Screen Production)
1g Admission into MCACW-Master of Creative Arts (Creative Writing)
1h Admission into MCADR-Master of Creative Arts (Drama)
1i Admission into MCASP-Master of Creative Arts (Screen Production)
Must Satisfy: ((1 or 1a or 1b or 1c or 1d or 1e or 1f or 1g or 1h or 1i))

DRAM3103 has been successfully completed

This topic explores song and dance as integral aspects of the genres of popular performance, including vaudeville, variety, cabaret and revue, musicals on stage and screen, and dancing in night clubs and music videos. The emphasis is on histories of song and dance forms as live performance and their mediation as popular entertainment from the 1920s to now. Case studies of selected works drawn from Australia, Europe and North America will provide opportunities for analysing the dramaturgy and aesthetics of image, action and sound.

This topic aims to:

• increase students' knowledge and appreciation of song and dance in popular performance

• enable students to explore selected performance works drawn from the history of popular performance

• provide opportunities for students to recognise, articulate and evaluate the dramaturgy and aesthetics of image, action and sound

• develop students' ability to think, speak and write about performance in a critically-engaged, aesthetically-informed and ethically responsive manner

On completion of this topic students will be able to:

• describe the significance of selected performance works and their contribution to developments in popular performance

• apply appropriate dramaturgical aesthetic criteria in analysing song and dance in performance and evaluating their relation to cultural contexts

• participate constructively and reflexively in discussion of the embodied ethics of performance

• identify opportunities for engaging popular dramaturgies and aesthetic criteria in students' own practice as artists and critics