The closure of dance studios for the remainder of the semester poses an obvious question for many students: where, and how, can we continue learning through movement? Faculty member Leah Cox’s dance composition class has reimagined this challenge as an opportunity. As they study postmodern movement, the students have let new dance spaces inspire their work, and the resulting video assignments have opened new conversations about searching for creative places in confinement.
As Cox’s class was learning before COVID-19’s spread forced all classes into online settings, the frontrunners of the postmodern movement strove to bring pedestrian qualities into dance. The goal of postmodernists was to challenge the traditionally held belief that dancers must exhibit elite skills and virtuosity in order to participate in the world of dance. The postmodern technique, then, was based less on sheer skill and more on authentic, human movements. Now, while learning remotely, the students have experienced another postmodern technique at work.
“When we transferred to remote learning, we began folding in another element of postmodern choreography: creating site specific work that challenges common notions of where dance is performed,” shares Cox. To accompany their studies, she asked her students to choreograph a site–specific piece with a focus on incorporating postmodern techniques. The resulting assignment both enriched their understanding of the postmodern style and forced them to get creative with their dance spaces.
When it came to finding locations for site-specific work, Cox’s students did not disappoint. One student, Gracyn Womeldorph, filmed her movement piece entirely in her car, exploring unique ways to move throughout that confined space. Another, Bridget Caston, experimented with different camera angles and lighting in an open room, shifting from capturing her full body in motion to just a portion. Lindsay Ball, a third student, walked up and down the stairs at her apartment in multiple different shoes to capture the change in pace and energy that accompanied each pair of shoes.
Cox’s entire dance composition class finished this assignment with a new understanding and appreciation for postmodern techniques, but the project has sparked a larger conversation as well. “Most of these choreographers also found themselves reflecting on how we consider pedestrian gestures in a time of isolation and what it means to investigate a site less by choice than by necessity,” says Cox. Their work has shone a new light on the postmodern concept of dancing outside of the normal studio and stage, and in these strange times where unconventional performance spaces are the only option, their creativity serves as an inspiration to us all.