Note about overlapping courses
While some PMA instructors will allow students to enroll in classes that overlap, not all do. If your proposed Fall 2021 schedule includes overlaps, please consult with the faculty in question before enrolling so that you can adjust your enrollment plans if necessary.
Dance Improvisation (PMA 2280)
Instructor: Miles Yeung-Tieu
Course Time: Tuesday & Thursday 2:45 - 4:00
A studio practice focused on movement generation and real-time composition. This course seeks to provide poetics as a resource for dance, in both solo form and collaboration with others. Imagery, sound, and words will be given to evoke ideas of movement, developing students' individualized instincts. Class will be structured with both exercises and dedicated "improv jam" time. (Embodied Performance rubric)
Dance Technique III - Modern (PMA 3220)
Instructor: Miles Yeung-Tieu
Course Time: Tuesdays & Thursdays. 4:50 - 6:20pm
Modern Dance Technique course focusing on musicality, coordination, placement, use of weight, and movement texture. Class will focus on the developing dexterity through exercises in center, moving across the floor, and movement phrases. This course is influenced by modern techniques such as Horton, Graham, Taylor, and Gaga. Students will have the opportunity to explore highly physical elements such as floor work, jumps, turns, and inversions as well as fine isolated motor skills. (Embodied Performance rubric)
Global Dance I (PMA 3226)
Instructor: Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz
Course Time: Thursday, 9:40am - 10:55am
How does the social production of dance reflect its historical context? Is dance inherently political? What is the meaning of the "beautiful" in dance? Beginning with 16th-century court dances, we will explore how aesthetics have been aligned both with and against politics in various periods, across borders, and genres of the performing body, looking at dance as insider's diplomacy and outsider's rebellion. Is modern dance a democratization of the art form? Is postmodern dance a discourse of traditions? This course is designed to promote a critical appreciation of dance, its values, and its ambitions, by developing a historical and cultural understanding.
American Drama (PMA 3757)
Instructor: Ellen Gainor
Course Times: Mondays/Wednesdays, 1:00pm - 2:15pm
Explores major American playwrights from 1900 to 1960, introducing students to American theatre as a significant part of modern American cultural history. We will consider the ways in which theatre has contributed to the construction and deconstruction of a national identity. Similarly, we will examine the influence of the American theatre on and in film. We will pay special attention to the social, political, and aesthetic contexts of the time period and discuss the shifting popularity of dramatic forms, including melodrama, realism, expressionism, absurdism, and the folk play, in the American theatre canon. (History, Theory, Criticism rubric)
Introduction to Text Analysis (PMA 4650)
Instructor: Bruce Levitt
Course Time: Monday, 11:20am - 1:15pm
This course looks at the play as the central, essential source for production decisions made by the actor, the director, the designer, and the dramaturge. Students will read plays, participate in class discussions, serve as discussion leader, present projects, and write papers as assigned. (History, Theory, Criticism rubric)
Advanced Studies in Acting (PMA 4801)
Instructor: Bruce Levitt
Course Time: Monday, 7:30pm - 10:30pm
The class combines the work of community-based 501(c)3, MIRTH A Theatre Company (the fiscal sponsor for the Phoenix Players), and CPEP alumni. This collaboration with MIRTH/ Phoenix Re-entry brings together Professor Levitt’s decade of experience working with incarcerated populations and joins it with CPEP’s own decade of work with incarcerated people and CPEP’s expanding alumni network and its role in the reentry of former CPEP students. Cornell undergraduates and the MIRTH/Phoenix Players Re-entry members will collaborate in creating and devising a theatre piece that will exponentially expand the knowledge of the power of theatrical expression and the techniques of the Phoenix Players and how those techniques can be applied to the challenges of ReEntry. (Embodied Performance rubric)