Academics

  • Two students dance in Harvard Dance Project. One holds the other up as they fall back close to the ground. An electronic timer is visible in the background.

    Harvard Dance Project

    A production-based course where students work with leading choreographers in the field. PC: Liza Voll Photography

  • Uproot Aesthetics Class Presentation

    Media in the Classroom

    Final Presentation for TDM 169C: Uproot Aesthetics: Interdisciplinary Temporalities in Performance

  • An Asian woman, sitting on a chair with one foot tucked up under her leg, talks to an audience in a classroom. She is smiling as she speaks.

    Beginning Acting Through Scene Study and Monologue Work

    A beginning acting class focusing on scene and monologue work using contemporary texts from theater, television and film

  • Students dancing in a dance studio

    Performing Culture: Exploring Identity and Power Through Hip Hop Dance

    Students learn choreography from Professor Aysha Upchurch in TDM 149UB

  • Students sit around a table in a classroom

    TDM Production Studio: Making Original Performance

    Students in the Spring 2020 Production Studio collaborate with guest artists and Visiting Lecturer Kaneza Schaal

The concentration in Theater, Dance & Media (TDM) aims to integrate historical and theoretical study with art making—a central concern of Harvard’s Report of the Task Force on the Arts. Our courses combine critical reading and writing with art making, bringing the classroom to the studio, the studio to the classroom, and both to the stage. More specifically, our studio courses allow students to acquire hands-on experience with the different aspects of art making—directing, acting, design, dramaturgy, dance—thus deepening their understanding of these complex art forms, while their education in theater history and aesthetics informs their guided experiments in the studio. In this way, the concentration integrates experiential learning and historical study.

The structure of the concentration is informed by the three features that make the study of theater, dance, and media a unique occasion for a liberal arts education: their composite, multi-media nature; the process of historical adaptation; and collaborative art making. The Sophomore Tutorial emphasizes the multi-medial nature of theater and offer an introduction to the different languages and art forms of which theater, dance, and media are composed. This composite nature is developed and deepened in a Junior Tutorial, as well as in elective seminars, lectures, and studio classes, where students learn the different constituent parts of theater, dance, and media both practically and theoretically. The historical dimension of these art forms will be anchored in theater history requirements. Practical theater work teaches students how to navigate the collaborative process of theater making. In addition, a significant number of courses emphasize the intellectual history of reflection on theater and its influence on society and on other disciplines.