ARTH 6858 - [Dancing the Stone: Body, Memory, and Architecture]

(crosslisted)
(also ASIAN 6656)

4 credits.

Next offered 2013-2014. Permission of instructor required. Co-meets with ARTH 4858/ASIAN 4456.

K. McGowan.

This course examines the role of temples and their sculptural programs in South and Southeast Asia as a creative stimuli for performative reenactments. Choreographic encounters between imagination and memory are mapped as they occur at various points historically and politically in Java, Bali, Cambodia, and India. Because architectural choreography implies the human body’s inhabitation and experience of place, the nature of ritualized behavior and its relationship to performance and politics is explored spatially, both in organizing experience and defining or redefining identity on colonial, national, and diasporic margins. Students have the unique opportunity to balance the demands of learning a Javanese traditional dance and/or its musical accompaniment, taught by visiting artists while exploring performance traditions in historical perspective.