DRAM2105 Song and Dance

This topic explores song and dance as integral aspects within specific genres of popular performance such as the Broadway musical. Emphasis is on the history, genealogy, and development of selected forms, as well as the social, economic, political, and cultural contexts out of which they emerged. Case studies of selected works will provide opportunities to analyse their aesthetic principles and dramaturgical structures and to evaluate why they remain popular with audiences.

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 learn to recognise and articulate the ways in which music, story, and dance interact within specific genres
• Develop students' ability to think, speak and write about performance in a critically-engaged, aesthetically-informed and ethically responsive manner

1. Evaluate the significance of selected performance works and their contribution to developments in popular performance
2. Analyse song and dance in performance using appropriate aesthetic criteria
3. Examine the operation of song and dance within specific historical and cultural contexts
4. Discuss constructively and reflexively the embodied experience of performance and its reception
5. Explore opportunities for engaging popular dramaturgies and aesthetic criteria in students' own practice as artists, critics, teachers, and informed spectators