🔵 🔴 🟡 Course description

Dance, of all the arts related to the exposure of the human body to space, due to its ephemeral form and its resistance to speech, was associated, perhaps to an excessive extent, with feminine "nature". Even with the most recent social recognition and respect for the male dancer profession, dance is still a female-dominated art, even if men hold dominant artistic and managerial positions. The course focuses on the study of choreographers, mainly women, between artistic work and experiential relationship with their work (Is. Duncan, M. Graham, J. Rainer, M. Wigman, P. Baush, Z. Nikoloudi et al.). Creators live, dance and position themselves in their artistic path against concepts such as patriarchy, gender identity, race, colonialism, ecological destruction, etc. At the same time, the experiential part of the course focuses on physical improvisation in space, playing with gravity, dynamics, levels, flow and rhythm.

After the successful completion of the course, the students will: 

• understand elements of gender and identity conceptualities, masculinity/femininity, patriarchy, gender-power relationship

• know facts about the work of creators/choreographers, the history of dance

• have a critical attitude towards gender representations and especially the way and practices that constituted them

• trace the influence of gender and sexuality theories on dance art

• be able to develop their own kinesiological vocabulary 

🔵 🔴 🟡 Theory (2 hours)

1. Introductions on gender: V. Woolf, A Room of Her Own – Simone de Beavoir, The Second Gender – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Let's All Be Feminists 

2. Dance and Gender: Gender and Sexuality in Art (Athanasiou-Butler)

3. Classical dance: the stereotypical roles of pas des deux 

4. Isadora Duncan: a new dynamic dance performance (Ruth St.Denis, L.Fuller)

5. Martha Graham: a new technique of modernism (Ted Shawn + M.Cunnigham)

6. Yvonne Rainer : no to spectacle, not to virtuosity (St.Paxton)

7. Mary Wigman: Dance in the Third Reich + Racism (R.Laban)

8. Pina Baush: for a dance theater 

9. Anne Terese de Keersmaeker: the body in space and time

10. Koula Pratsika/Rallou Manou/ Zouzou Nikoloudi: the Greek identity in dance 

11. Student choreographies 

12. Student choreographies 

13. Epilogue: the transformative power of live performance in bodies and identities, dancing the gender body (+ perception of movement)

🔵 🔴 🟡 Workshop (1 hour)

The experiential part of the course focuses on physical improvisation in space, playing with gravity, dynamics, levels, flow and rhythm.

Review language: Greek

🔵 🔴 🟡 Evaluation method:

• 50% written presentation
• 50% oral presentation / choreography

• Face-to-face
• Use of PowerPoint and audio-visual examples (13 lectures)
• Support of the learning process through eClass with weekly provision of audiovisual material, links, photos, extra bibliography and related information (exhibitions, cultural institutions, etc.)

https://eclass.uop.gr/courses/3713 

🔵 🔴 🟡 Course Textbooks [Eudoxus]

• Menti, M. (eds.) (2024) Bodies Present: An Introduction to Dance Theory. University Studio Press.

• Athanasiou, A. (eds.) (2006) Feminist Theory and Cultural Criticism. Nisos Publications

• Cooper-Albright, A. (2016) Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance.

Extra Bibliography

• Butler Judith, Gender Upheaval: Feminism and the Overthrow of Identity, transl. Giorgos Karabelas, introduction and scientific editing by Venetia Kantsa, afterword Athena Athanasiou. Athens: Alexandria 2009 [1990]. 

• Butler Judith, Bodies with Meaning: Demarcations of "Gender" in Speech, transl. Pelagia Marketou, edited and introduced by Athena Athanasiou. Athens: Ekkremes, 2008 [1993]. 

• Cameron Deborah, Feminism. Past and Present of a movement, trans. Filotas Ditsas, Crete University Press, 2020

• De Beauvoir Simon, The Second Sex, trans. Jenny Konstantinou, Metaichmio 2021 [1949]

• Leigh Foster, Susan (ed.), Corporealities, Dancing Knowledge, Culture and Power, Routledge, 1996 

• Kantsa V., Moutafi V., Papataxiarchis Efth. (ed.), Studies on Gender in Anthropology and History. Athens: Alexandria 2012. 

• Laqueur Th., Constructing gender. Body and social gender from the ancient Greeks to Freud. Athens: Polytropon 2003. 

• Papataxiarchis Efth. – Paradellis Theod. (ed.), Identities and Gender in Contemporary Greece. Anthropological Approaches. Athens: Kastaniotis – University of the Aegean 1992.

• Athanasiou, Athena. Life on the Edge. Essays on the Body, Gender and Biopolitics. Athens: Ekkremes, 2007. 

• Dimitrakaki, Angela. Art and globalization. From the postmodern point to the biopolitical arena. Hestia Bookstore, 2013. 

• Karaba Elpida - Lykourioti Iris (ed.), Feminist theories, aesthetic practices and globalized technologies. Volos, Thessaly University Press & Center for New Media and Feminist Practices in Public Space, 2022.