Since 1993, Co-Artistic Director Annie-B Parson has been teaching dance making at New York University’s Experimental Theater Wing. In addition to teaching at ETW, she has led artistic development workshops to emerging and mid-career artists in New York City, around the country, and around the world.
“MS. PARSON, THE BESSIE, OBIE, AND GUGGENHEIM FELLOWSHIP AWARD-WINNING CO-DIRECTOR OF BIG DANCE THEATER, HAD TRAINED SEVERAL WAVES OF RISING DIRECTORS AND PERFORMERS AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY’S EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE WING. BUT VERY FEW PEOPLE OUTSIDE OF THE PROGRAM HAD EVER SEEN HER TEACH…. THE CLASSES SOLD OUT IN 10 MINUTES.”
– Helen Shaw, The New York Sun, “So You Think You Can Choreograph?”
LECTURE
The Virtuosity of Structure is a performance lecture. In 2007 Annie-B Parson was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. With those funds she created this talk on the elements of choreography and the virtuosity of form. The talk, which is accompanied by video and a sound score, relates the elements of dance to other phenomena in our lives. This talk is appropriate for groups of any size and any background, including groups outside of the arts; it is introductory in nature.
The Body in Space is a 45-minute lecture about choreography. The lecture begins by defining choreography as: the intentional and aesthetic organization of the body in space. From this precipice, Parson uses imagery from her own work to decipher the elements of dance making. In this talk, we learn about Parson’s perspective of howcompositional and tonal decisions are crafted to express the world.
CREATIVE WORKSHOPS
These workshops look at a formal approach to creating movement phrases and theatrical events. Participants will be hyper-generative, using Big Dance’s rubric driven structures to create piles of movement phrases and theatrical events that blend the boundaries of what is generally prescribed as theater and dance.
The students will explore the expressive use of their choreographic/theatrical voice and gain insight into how postmodern performance-makers create work. They will work with ideas that include: manipulations of pure movement, the borrowing of theatrical devices, the use of found text, appropriation of historical materials, and examinations of the elements of performance.
Elizabeth DeMent giving a creative workshop at Saint Paul’s School in New Hampshire. Photo credit: Eric Wolfram for SPSBC