MA

Performance

Teaching & Learning

What you'll learn

At a weekly evening seminar, address the issues of what we know, what we should know and how we can learn more about performance. You'll look at performance research, developing different writing registers, epistemic and expert practices, and consider what really matters in performance.
Examine specific research areas proposed by yourself and your course mates, leading to the creation and presentation of a conference paper or presentation in a professional context.
Immerse yourself in a project which will result in the creation of one or a series of new performance works. You will have the option to work independently or collaboratively.
Undertake a project in a specific area of performance, such as dance, theatre, live art, or stand up comedy. You will work under the supervision of one or more members of our performing arts staff who will arrange regular observation of your work throughout the rehearsal/making/conceptual process.
At a weekly evening seminar, address the issues of what we know, what we should know and how we can learn more about performance. You'll look at performance research, developing different writing registers, epistemic and expert practices, and consider what really matters in performance.
Examine specific research areas proposed by yourself and your course mates, leading to the creation and presentation of a conference paper or presentation in a professional context.
Immerse yourself in a project which will result in the creation of one or a series of new performance works. You will have the option to work independently or collaboratively.
Undertake a project in a specific area of performance, such as dance, theatre, live art, or stand up comedy. You will work under the supervision of one or more members of our performing arts staff who will arrange regular observation of your work throughout the rehearsal/making/conceptual process.

What you'll learn

Visit a national or international performance festival with and take the opportunity to collaborate in talk-back sessions with artists, directors, critics and academics. You will submit a written report on your experience.
We will lead you through a series of classes in voice and body-based training including Feldenkrais, Yoga, Tai Chi, Clean Language, Kalaripyatthu, Hart and Polyphonic singing.
Develop your artistic practice under the mentorship and guidance of an established professional artist who operates in your area of interest. You will be encouraged to critically reflect on your work and identify areas where you can enhance your skills.
Explore contemporary global choreographic practices. We will provide you with the space to reconsider and develop your own making practices as a process of choreographing performance.
Gain hands-on experience with a placement opportunity linked to your career aspirations. Placements might include working in administration in an arts organisation, engaging in undergraduate teaching or contributing to in-house artist projects, either in a supportive role or in a performance context. This is an opportunity to undertake an undergraduate teaching placement through shadowing and collaborating with staff; residencies with established artists and companies; event, project and festival management opportunities with university partners; international platform opportunities.
This module will focus on using dramatic story and ritual as a means to inspire possibilities for social change when working with young people in challenging educational/community settings.
This module will foster your skills in improvisation as a performed choreographic practice. You'll study and train in improvisational methods and skills in a range of frameworks of practice, for example ensemble practice, performer/maker, director/facilitator and as collaborator. You'll explore spontaneous composition as a practice as you employ improvisational states, scores, imagery, concepts and structures to develop improvised performance material. This module will aim to disrupt the binary understandings of the terms choreography and improvisation. You'll participate in experiencing self-organising principles in action in ensemble dance-making, and be encouraged to consider the aesthetics and ideologies presenting themselves in this context of practice.
Make work in and/or with a community, foregrounding the use of models of socially engaged practice, including critical consideration of participatory practice. You'll undertake a practice that primarily engages with and in a specifically identified community context. You'll be asked to attend to political and ethical questions arising in this practice such as facilitation, quality, non-professional labour, exploitation, authenticity and empowerment. You'll also consider the problems of this practice in immediate and wider contexts.
Study the professional context in which artists are required to teach workshops, master-classes or to ‘tour’ their teaching alongside performance work. You'll understand this method as a way of gaining support and building public engagement, opening up and sharing process and practice. You'll address the ways in which choreographers can share and develop their practice as teachers and the skills required to do this effectively. Teaching and workshop situations are often a creative space for artists to test their own creative thinking, choreographic philosophies and embodied principles with a group of workshop participants. As such, you'll consider how pedagogy is situated in relation to your artistic practice and explore how you want to establish your teacher identity. The module will focus on what the key concerns of artists teaching with integrity may be in contemporary contexts. Your focus will be the teaching of creative practice and choreography, and you'll explore the pedagogic and philosophic principles of ‘workshopping’ and creative group leadership.
Explore practices that have been characterised as sitting within the ‘Expanded Field’. You'll study conceptual and post-conceptual dance practices and the notion of choreographic propositions existing in a wider context to include multiple formats and expressions, experimental and interdisciplinary practices. You'll look at choreographic practice as a critically reflective methodology for knowledge generation through performance making. This module will ask you to consider choreography as a strategy for physical, aural, textual, image and object compositions. You'll reconsider and develop your own making practices challenging and problematising what might traditionally be starting points for practice. Material and concepts will be explored through processes of conceptual experimentation. The module will offer provocations to form, content, structural design and will investigate questions around what might hold value, and around how choreography might expose knowledge. Your practice on the module will explore and challenge modes of production and modes of interactivity in choreographic presentation.
Visit a national or international performance festival with and take the opportunity to collaborate in talk-back sessions with artists, directors, critics and academics. You will submit a written report on your experience.
We will lead you through a series of classes in voice and body-based training including Feldenkrais, Yoga, Tai Chi, Clean Language, Kalaripyatthu, Hart and Polyphonic singing.
Develop your artistic practice under the mentorship and guidance of an established professional artist who operates in your area of interest. You will be encouraged to critically reflect on your work and identify areas where you can enhance your skills.
Explore contemporary global choreographic practices. We will provide you with the space to reconsider and develop your own making practices as a process of choreographing performance.
Gain hands-on experience with a placement opportunity linked to your career aspirations. Placements might include working in administration in an arts organisation, engaging in undergraduate teaching or contributing to in-house artist projects, either in a supportive role or in a performance context. This is an opportunity to undertake an undergraduate teaching placement through shadowing and collaborating with staff; residencies with established artists and companies; event, project and festival management opportunities with university partners; international platform opportunities.
This module will focus on using dramatic story and ritual as a means to inspire possibilities for social change when working with young people in challenging educational/community settings.
This module will foster your skills in improvisation as a performed choreographic practice. You'll study and train in improvisational methods and skills in a range of frameworks of practice, for example ensemble practice, performer/maker, director/facilitator and as collaborator. You'll explore spontaneous composition as a practice as you employ improvisational states, scores, imagery, concepts and structures to develop improvised performance material. This module will aim to disrupt the binary understandings of the terms choreography and improvisation. You'll participate in experiencing self-organising principles in action in ensemble dance-making, and be encouraged to consider the aesthetics and ideologies presenting themselves in this context of practice.
Make work in and/or with a community, foregrounding the use of models of socially engaged practice, including critical consideration of participatory practice. You'll undertake a practice that primarily engages with and in a specifically identified community context. You'll be asked to attend to political and ethical questions arising in this practice such as facilitation, quality, non-professional labour, exploitation, authenticity and empowerment. You'll also consider the problems of this practice in immediate and wider contexts.
Study the professional context in which artists are required to teach workshops, master-classes or to ‘tour’ their teaching alongside performance work. You'll understand this method as a way of gaining support and building public engagement, opening up and sharing process and practice. You'll address the ways in which choreographers can share and develop their practice as teachers and the skills required to do this effectively. Teaching and workshop situations are often a creative space for artists to test their own creative thinking, choreographic philosophies and embodied principles with a group of workshop participants. As such, you'll consider how pedagogy is situated in relation to your artistic practice and explore how you want to establish your teacher identity. The module will focus on what the key concerns of artists teaching with integrity may be in contemporary contexts. Your focus will be the teaching of creative practice and choreography, and you'll explore the pedagogic and philosophic principles of ‘workshopping’ and creative group leadership.
Explore practices that have been characterised as sitting within the ‘Expanded Field’. You'll study conceptual and post-conceptual dance practices and the notion of choreographic propositions existing in a wider context to include multiple formats and expressions, experimental and interdisciplinary practices. You'll look at choreographic practice as a critically reflective methodology for knowledge generation through performance making. This module will ask you to consider choreography as a strategy for physical, aural, textual, image and object compositions. You'll reconsider and develop your own making practices challenging and problematising what might traditionally be starting points for practice. Material and concepts will be explored through processes of conceptual experimentation. The module will offer provocations to form, content, structural design and will investigate questions around what might hold value, and around how choreography might expose knowledge. Your practice on the module will explore and challenge modes of production and modes of interactivity in choreographic presentation.