Department of Dance
PROJECT PROPOSALS - MFA Handbook
- Whether or not goals for each piece were met, in terms of mood/style, pacing, expression, dynamics, general performance level, etc. How well lighting and costumes contributed to the overall effect and/or environment.
- Relationships with dancers, analyzing any specific problems that came up, citing ways in which you were successful in working with dancers. Evaluate the methods you employed to stimulate them to work to full capacity. Be specific. Discuss ideas for handling similar situations in the future.
- Relationships with designers (and composers if appropriate), including any problems with communication, collaboration, or timing. Be specific. If applicable, discuss the process of finding a suitable space for performance and negotiations for the site. Discuss ideas for handling any similar situations in the future.
- Audience response, pointing out evidence of impact, generally and specifically; evaluate actual response to each dance and to overall concert, comparing the reaction you got to that for which you aimed.
- Any thoughts about publicity, including its effectiveness, the efficacy of your timetable, etc.; discuss ideas for handling similar situations in the future.
- Conclude with personal observations, which will serve to tie together the foregoing coverage, in addition to your overall evaluation of the concert, recommendations for future students setting out on their projects, and your plans for future work.
- Discuss the political nature of your choreographic process and product. What social messages are conveyed in your interactions with dancers, designers, and musicians? What social messages do you hope audience members read in your work?
- Discuss your choreographic process and product as an autobiographic act.
Discuss the ways in which your personal history and social and political interests shape your choreography AND how the acts of creating and presenting choreography and participating in an MFA program shape who you are. - If your work has some special source, population, or accoutrements—that is, is site-specific, community-based, uses technology or is derived from ritual, discuss the use of these elements in your process and the final product.
- Discuss the aesthetic issues which you find guiding your choreographic choices, how they link your dances into a body of work, what the influences have been, and the thought processes that have led to the choices. In answering this question, avoid rehashing practical “what” and “how” questions (What I did in my concert; How I did it) in relationship to your concert in favor of “why” and “who” questions (Why do I work primarily in abstract form? Why is it important to include video with my work? Why is this important to audiences or to me as a dance maker? Who has influenced this belief?)
MFA MASTER PRODUCTION (DCE 697)
The MFA Choreography Master Production Concert Process consists of the following:
1. Proposal. A written proposal for an evening-length concert must be presented to each committee member ten days before the committee meets. The merits of the proposal will be negotiated with the committee. Proposals should include the choreographer's best effort at describing all work(s) to be performed, program order, names of lighting designers (if applicable) and/or spaces being used, and a timetable/plan for publicity. While proposals may vary, it is typical for half of the concert to be new work for which you have not already received credit with the remainder of the concert comprised of work(s) created since you enrolled in the MFA program at UNCG.
2. Production Journal. A production journal, including thoughts, plans, and ideas concerning artistic, educational, and practical issues should be kept throughout the development of your concert. This is due to your chair with reflective paper.
3. Reflective Paper. This paper is due first to your committee chair who, after reading it, will ask you to amplify certain areas, make corrections, or give you permission to distribute it to the rest of the committee. It is due to each committee member ten days before the oral examination. Based on your production journal, subsequent reflection on your concert and attendant activities, and any impressions gathered from others, please discuss your Masters Production in two ways. First, address the PRACTICAL aspects of your Masters Production process and concert by answering ALL the following questions. Your answers should be concise yet specific.
Second, address your Masters Production process and concert CRITICALLY and
SELF-REFLEXIVELY. Feel free to enlarge your discussion by including ideas gained through course work or other experiences. Address ONE of the following questions in a carefully prepared three to five page essay:
4. See point 5 on the Review Calendar. Remember that records documenting your MFA concert or project must be submitted to the department before you can be cleared for graduation.
MASTER PRODUCTION PROJECT IN DESIGN
1. Scope. Usually, a Design Master Production Project includes executing the lighting design for two full concerts of dance works. Other projects which are equivalent in scope may be proposed.
2. Proposal. A written proposal for the Project as a whole must be presented to each committee member ten days before the Portfolio Review for approval:
a. A list of dances to be included on the concert(s) that you will be designing, including for each piece: title, number of dancers, choreographer, music or sound (composers and sources), props and/or sets, a brief description and length. (It is understood that some dances may be in the process of creation. In such cases working ideas, working titles and estimated lengths should be listed.)
b. A complete working technical schedule, including all performance dates and times (these include hang and focus as well as design times), and pre-technical rehearsal times for observation of choreography and dialogue with the choreographers.
c. A brief, but complete, description of your design responsibilities for the concerts. (For example you may be lighting all the dances and designing scenery for one, and costumes or props for another. One dance may include projections, which you need to create or facilitate.) It is important to know the extent of your design assignments with clarity. If you are collaborating on some aspects of design with other designers, or with the choreographer, that should be noted.
3. Design Portfolio. As a formal record of your work, for each concert you will provide: a light plot (plan view and sectional), a magic sheet (including all color assignments), a soft patch schedule, an instrument schedule, a color change sheet for each dance, a stage manager’s cue sheet for each dance, and a brief written description of the “look” for each cue. For costumes, props, and sets you will provide: preliminary sketches, working drawings and renderings developed during the design process and color slides of completed designs.
4. Video Record. For each concert you will provide a video record of the production taken during performance.
5. Reflective Paper. This is due to your committee, along with your journal, your design portfolio, and your video record, ten days before you oral examination. In addition, a clean copy must be submitted for inclusion in your permanent file; the paper must be filed before clearance for graduation. The paper will include the following:
a. Whether or not your design goals for each dance were met in terms of mood, pacing, and technical execution. A self-evaluation!
b. Relationships with choreographers, dancers, and crewmembers, analyzing any specific problems which arose during the working process and citing particularly successful moments. Evaluate methods you employed to stimulate a good working environment and discuss ideas you have that may contribute to the better handling of difficult situations in the future.
c. Audience response, pointing out any evidence of the impact of your work. Which designs seemed most successful (from the audience or choreographer’s point of view)? Why do you think that was so? Do you agree? Which were least successful? Why?
d. Include personal observations with your overall self-evaluation; tie the foregoing coverage to recommendations for future students undertaking similar projects and your plans for the future.
MFA PROJECTS IN CHOREOGRAPHY (DCE 698):
The scholarship of choreographic theory, practice, and pedagogy may adopt a variety of forms any one or a synthesis of which may be appropriate for an individual student in designing his or her culminating project. Students nearing completion of their work in the DCE 651 Studio Problems in Choreography curriculum are encouraged to review and reflect on the body of work they have created there and elsewhere, both on and off campus, and the insights they have gained through these and other curricular and professional experiences. From their reflections they are encouraged to locate and define the central issue, problem or question which will form the basis for framing their culminating project. With faculty approval, students are encouraged to be inventive about these “frames.”
While some students may find it most appropriate and desirable to revise, rehearse, and perform a dance work, others may propose alternative modes of individual or shared public presentation, scholarly writing, or some combination of these and/or other suitable means formally to demonstrate the accomplishments qualifying them to receive their degree. In a successful past project, a student researched release technique by taking classes, interviewing release practitioners, observing dance works incorporating release technique, and doing historical research. Her work had two products: a research paper about the history of release technique and its social and cultural implications as a performance form and bodily practice and a twenty minute dance work. Other ideas might include a project that combines research into video editing techniques and the creation of a videodance or research into the perceptual and conceptual issues involved in putting together a well-formed dance concert, with thought as to order and how one dance will set off another, paired with a half-concert of dance works.
1. Proposal. A written proposal for the culminating experience must be presented to each committee member ten days before the committee meets.
Requirements for project proposals
1-2 page summative statement of artistic philosophy as related to/embodied in the dance works created by the student during his or her tenure as a student at UNCG;
1-2 page description of the proposed project, including primary and secondary challenges associated with its various parts or stages, and evaluative criteria on the basis of which the completed project should be assessed;
2-3 page plan for the practical aspects of the project to include personnel, sites, materials, and studio space needed. Ideas for advertising the project. Budget. Timeline.
1-2 page description of the way(s) in which curricular and extra/curricular work completed while at UNCG have prepared the student for this particular project and inspired him or her to undertake it.;
2-3 page review/analysis of literature and/or other sources as appropriate to situate the proposed project within relevant wider contexts and/or currents of contemporary thought and practice;
1 page description of expectations of and for the project chair and committee members.
The proposal will be negotiated with the committee, who will consider:
• the relationship of the proposed project to student coursework and other
accomplishments at UNCG. Is the student prepared for the work proposed?;
• the substance and challenge of the project. Is the project worthy of three hours of graduate credit?
2. Oral defense of projects. Students will schedule a date for their oral defense with their committee and provide to each committee member copies of all relevant documentation of the completed project no later than ten days before the oral defense. Students will open their defense with an oral summation of the project, including a discussion of the central issue, problem, or question that inspired their work and its relationship to their finished work. Do you see In preparing for the oral defense, students should consider the creative and/or scholarly processes by which the project was planned, executed, and brought to completion; all outcomes (intended and unintended) of which the student is aware; the learning accomplished through the project; and the implications of the project for the students and the audiences of the project (artistic, educational, intellectual, or social/ political implications of their project and/or any of its components.
3. The students must submit two copies of all written and performed products of this work before they can be cleared for graduation. See Review Calendar.