DAN 250 - World History of the Dance / Fall 2025

  1   A Timeless Record    Samantha Weissman Through this reflection, I will summarize on my learning from World Dance History and how they have impacted me both personally and academically. I will explain my most significant takeaways from this reflection, my approach to incorporating them into my field, and my thoughts about the entire process of taking this class and the course overall. The most significant takeaway I will have is my new understanding of just how rich and diverse dance history really is. Each weekly topic, from Paleolithic Rituals to the Middle Ages and Baroque and modern dance, has made me think about how dancing is not just an art for...

Please, answer the following questions in your own words, using: common sense, previous knowledge, class experience and the content of our blog posts. QUESTIONS  1. The Iron Age had a significant influence on our continent due to the arrival of enslaved Africans. Their culture has been retained as a result of syncretic believe systems such as santeria dances and cultural practices such as carnival. How was the retention of African religious and cultural practices possible in our continent? 2. When we started the unit on Ancient Egypt and the subsequent Ptolemaic Dynasty, we underlined the importance of their processions. What was the main purpose of processions then and currently? 3. After the Jewish people left Egypt, they settled in different areas of the world where they created new performance practices. The Yemenite dance we saw in class was descriptive of the diasporic journey of Hebrew people. Explain. 4. Greek Theater developed as a result of myths and ritual practices. ...

    I  Unit: Post - Modern Era Theme: Post-Modern & Contemporary Dance   Introduction While the term "postmodern" took on a different meaning when used to describe dance, the dance form did take inspiration from the ideologies of the wider postmodern movement, which "sought to deflate what it saw as overly pretentious and ultimately self-serving modernist views of art and the artist" [1] and was, more generally, a departure from modernist ideals.  Lacking stylistic homogeneity, Postmodern dance was discerned mainly by its anti-modern dance sentiments rather than by its dance style. The dance form was a reaction to the compositional and presentational constraints of the preceding generation of modern dancers, hailing the use of everyday movement as valid performance art and advocating for unconventional methods of dance composition.   Lastly, Contemporary dance [2] is a genre that developed during the mid-twentieth century and has sinc...

      I  Unit: Modern Era Theme: Modern and Post-Modern Dance   Introduction Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which includes dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing. Postmodern dance , on the other hand, is a 20th century concert dance form that came into popularity in the early 1960s.   II Learning Objectives   Understand the main characteristics of modern dance Explain relationship between modern and ballet  Gain an awareness of the influence of  other dances of modern Experience dancing three phrases in which the different modern techniques are applied     III Main Lesson   1 Presentations  2   Major Modern Dance Precursors Loie Fuller  (1862 - 1928)   Isadora Duncan   (1877-78 -1927)    Early Moderns Rudolf Laban  .......  (1879-1958)    Mary Wigman   (1886 - 1973)   Harald Kr...