From Necessity to Invention: Arts and Humanities Expand What’s Possible

BRISTOL, R.I. – Dance students make the Bristol campus their stage with choreography inspired by the landscape. Sculptors work outside, expanding the scale of their projects in the open air. Student actors focus on voice and expression as they prepare for a radio broadcast performance. 

“The students have missed being together. We are gathering together, and shaking the norms up,” said Associate Professor of Dance and Performance Studies Cathy Nicoli.

RWU's faculty in performing and visual arts took on the challenges of teaching while adhering to social distancing requirements and turned them into opportunities to practice new, innovative approaches to their art.

“I totally changed my curriculum to work with earth-based somatics, and I am getting more positive feedback from the students than I anticipated. I am using this as an opportunity to touch things that we couldn’t do indoors. I’m calling it free range," said Nicoli. 

We are practicing on the balcony of the library, on the quad, and down by the shell path. We will be working with the parking garage, the pond, the landscape behind the performing arts center, and the tennis courts for the final performance."

I want the students to see the landscape of the campus they are working on through different eyes. The practice of site-specific work is very different than work on a black box stage. We are researching scale. It is very much like architecture, landscape design, and choreography all at once.

It’s really changing the learning curve of the dancers and choreographers because the scale is huge. It feels more athletic. It is installational art. It’s a totally different experience.

The students dig this. They ask me if we can keep doing it. Now that we’ve proved we can do it out of necessity, we can do it out of choice going forward.”