Has it ever struck you how many different types of people you encounter just walking up Washington Road? If you start at Fine and Jadwin Halls, you hear aspiring engineers talking over problems of integrals and chemical formulas. Then you make your way up to the Wilson School, where future congressmen march confidently to classes with all the speed and precision of suit-clad businessmen. It can be easy to forget, amid all the math nerds and policy wonks, that, just a little bit farther north on Washington Road and a block east on Nassau Street, is the home of a different type of intellectual: the artist.
To discover more about fine arts at the University, I attended three classes at 185 Nassau St. last week. In the theater, sculpture and dance classes I observed, I discovered that Princeton's courses in the arts take a remarkably intellectual approach. I found students thinking intently and analytically about their respective arts. These students treat these courses not as fun electives like the ones we all dabbled in during high school, but as intellectual exercises relevant to interdisciplinary liberal arts education.
THR 201: Beginning Studies in Acting: Scene Study, Professor Timothy Vasen; Tuesday, March 27
Students pour quickly into an airy, sunlit room on the second floor of 185 Nassau. They chat, fiddling with bits of clothing that will serve as costumes for the scenes they are showing today. When the energetic Professor Vasen gets the class' attention and asks for a volunteer to lead a "warm-up," Hannah Barudin '10 offers to lead the class in a series of exercises to get the actors loose, limber and ready to perform.
The class congregates in a large circle, filling the space of the whitewashed studio. Barudin is lively and animated as she instructs the class in a series of stretches. She tells them to touch the floor and adds, "If you can't, don't worry about it." Vasen noted, "I haven't worried about that in years." Such a light tone persists throughout the class session, as students and the professor joke with one another.
Barudin proceeds to teach the class a game called "zip, zap, zop," in which the players use combinations of different sounds and hand motions to move energy in various directions around the circle. If a student uses the wrong hand motion relative to the sounds he makes, he's "out." The room fills quickly with sharp syllables, and the circle grows smaller as people fall out, until Barudin cries, "All right, we all win!"
Now that the class is warmed up, the students are ready to perform the scenes they have prepared. The class is divided into small groups of two or three actors, and each group has prepared a scene from one of several plays by Anton Chekhov. The first group, Carolyn Edelstein '10, Jeremy Jennings '09 and Tiffany Ko '09, performs a scene from Chekhov's "The Seagull." Jennings and Ko are an unhappily married couple; Edelstein is the mother of Ko's character.
After the group acts out the scene, the entire class discusses it, with both students and Vasen providing feedback. The actors, in turn, ask questions. Vasen's notes combine literary analysis of and historical background on Chekhov to instruct actors on how to fully immerse themselves into their characters. Speaking to Jennings, Vasen mentions "you the actor" and "you the character" as distinct but connected; indeed, the actors have created, through their deep analyses of the scenes in which they are acting, a true connection with their characters. Now, they are just tweaking their acting, using notes from their classmates on details regarding volume and hand motions.
"Play your actions as strongly as you possibly can," Vasen tells the class as they move on to other scenes. "And then see where you go with it."
VIS 222: Introductory Sculpture, Professor James Seawright; Tuesday, March 27
The sculpture studio is a two-room workshop full of tables and sawing tools, dusted with the residue of wood and clay. Students sit around a center table with their professor, James Seawright, a kindly man with a slight Southern drawl.
The sculpture class has just completed their second of four big projects. Their assignment was to use wood to "make a sculpture by constructing it, assembling a number of components into a finished whole." Seawright said that the students' work was informed by slide lectures in which students saw "the extent of things being done in sculpture today."
Now that the students have all completed their work, they take a class session to critique each other's sculptures. The students present their artwork one by one, explaining their inspiration and artistic process, and then their classmates provide feedback based on visual analysis.
Cameron White '09 has used wood to create a larger-than-life representation of a cigarette box. It appears at first glance that the depiction, albeit monumental in scale, is true to life; each "cigarette" is a cylindrical rod of wood, and the cigarettes appear encased in a box, with a lid attached by metal hinges that moves the same way the top of a real pack of cigarettes would. Yet, as Seawright points out, "it's inexact. [The cigarettes] are longer and slimmer than even Virginia Slims." Another student remarks that at one spot the cigarettes are stacked in three rows instead of two, so that "you keep asking yourself what you're seeing." Seawright also compares White's sculpture to Jasper Johns' beer cans, constantly placing students' work in the context of the modern art world.
Next up for critique is a sculpture by Elizabeth Kassler-Taub '10, who has used light-grained wood and perforated sheet metal to construct an organic form that she says was inspired by "shelf tree fungus." Kassler-Taub explains to the class how she cut the wood into lichen-like shapes by trial and error, using some pieces that had cracked while she cut them. She then punched holes in the wood slices to twist wire through them and attach them to the sheet metal, suspending the whole construction on rods. The class discusses Kassler-Taub's sculpture with the same kind of care and attention that it gave to White's work. They examine the interplay of materials and bring in references to biology, remarking on the organic form's similarity to cellular organelles.
The class also critiques a light fixture by Neil Wilta '07, in which bowed wood supports a florescent light covered with strung nylon. "This would look really wonderful in a nice, clear gallery," Seawright says. He suggests various manners of installing the sculpture for the class's showcase at the end of the semester.
Once the class is done with the day's critiques, Seawright introduces the assignment for their third project, in which the students are to create sculptures that use time as the fourth dimension. He explains to the students that they should make a sculpture that moves in a kinetic fashion or that creates a sense of narrative for the viewer. After discussing the assignment briefly, the class disperses, as some students go to the storage room of the sculpture studio to look for materials. Others start sketching to brainstorm ideas, already moving on to the next step.
DAN 409: Contemporary Dance: Advanced Choreography, Guest Artist Gabri Christa Reid; Friday, March 30
DAN 409 has two components: a technique section, taught by Meghan Durham, that meets twice a week to teach dancers contemporary performance styles, and a choreography session, taught by guest artist Gabri Christa Reid. The Friday class time is devoted to the latter component of the course, in which students generate and develop their own modern choreography.
In the spacious Hagan Dance Studio at 185 Nassau, a group of about a dozen students stretches and warms up before their session. They practice bits and pieces of choreography like an orchestra tuning its instruments. A piano stands in one corner of the room, where the class accompanist is fiddling with his music.
When Reid calls the class to attention, the students congregate in a circle on the floor, where they continue stretching as their teacher makes announcements. She urges them to watch a film called "The Cost of Living" to observe the dancing for inspiration. She also gives feedback on the papers which the students have turned in, saying that she will be returning them soon. The students in the class consistently have viewing, reading, and writing assignments to complement their dancing.
Once the teacher's assignments are over, the class congregates in a few rows of seating in the back of the studio to watch as their classmates perform, one by one, their latest pieces of choreography. The assignment was to choreograph a work characterized by actions and reactions; one part of the body initiates the movement, and the rest of the body follows.
Max Maisonrouge '07 and Preston Burger '07 are the first two to perform; unlike the rest of the people in the class, they have choreographed a duet. They first dance in silence, pushing, falling into each other, dancing percussive sequences that vary in speed and size. After they perform, the rest of the class comments on their work. Students comment on how in sync the two are when they perform, and Reid explains that the precision with which each one choreographs helps them achieve such unison. "The clearer you are in what you're working on," she says, "the easier it is to teach it to another person."
Maisonrouge and Burger perform again, having received the class' comments, this time with the pianist playing and singing a jazzy melody and watching the pair so that the music and the dancing stay in sync.
The class continues in much the same way, with individuals performing, sometimes once, sometimes twice, sometimes in silence, sometimes to the accompaniment of the pianist or of a CD. Although all the dancers have been given the same assignment, each has his or her own style, and as a result, each dance is different. Michelle Gawrys '09 moves her long limbs with fluidity; Billy Liu '07 dances boldly and without reservation; Katerina Wong '10 fills the entire space of the studio with her traveling steps.
The teacher and students' comments focus not only on the dancer's techniques but on the emotional and intellectual value of the dancing. "Listen to your body and not so much to the form you want it to be," Christa Reid tells Sidney Schiff '10. "Dance doesn't lie."
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