This is a hybrid studio-seminar course, at the introductory level, that approaches time-based performance making - i.e., choreography - as a practice of research and discovery. Performance-making practice in the studio will be complemented with required reading and writing assignments, utilizing each form of discourse - physical, verbal and textual - toward critical reflection through the medium of performance making. The course surveys varied strategies and models for performance-making/dance making, with the goal of assisting each student to formulate their own questions, ideas and methods. Students will learn a basic research methodology for the creation of choreographic works, developing palettes of performance actions through directed improvisation and other means, and experiment with strategies of organization to give that material shape and potency. Issues of craft will be explored as methods to keep an audience watching and engaged. Students will work both collaboratively and as choreographers authoring their own works, and will learn methods to describe, analyze and critique each other’s choreographic research. Open to all students and all dance and performance practices, with priority given to Contemporary Dance majors and minors.