Young and Beautiful

Final Draft-WritingAboutDanceSP18

I wrote this paper last semester and it is something I am incredibly proud of. For my second writing GE, I decided to take the class Dance2367H “Writing About Dance.” I enrolled in this class because I envisioned that it would merge two of my passions–writing and dance. But this class taught me so much more than how to write a paper about a scene from a music video. I learned how to approach interpretation of forms of art and, also, how to effectively write about it.

This class pushed me out of my comfort zone for many reasons. Being a science major limits my exposure to the humanities, which makes me poorly versed in creative arts. But this class caught my attention because I have always been interested in cheer and dance, and I anticipated that it would be a fun class to take. The course was outlined through a series of assignments that converged into one giant paper. We were able to pick a clip from a music video, dance video, movie, musical, or commercial. And then we had to analyze the choreography and then contextualize it towards a real-world phenomenon. I chose a clip from a ballroom dance piece to the song “Young and Beautiful” by Lana Del Rey. I contextualized this piece towards the strain placed on intimate relationships between men and women as a result of society’s idealistic perceptions of female youth and beauty.

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