Several students got to do just that in the first-ever cabaret class offered at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus this summer.

“It’s the first official cabaret performance workshop at a university with a textbook, so it’s actually very monumentous,” said instructor David Sabella, who is a master teacher in musical theater, voice coach, and co-author of the book the students used in the course titled So You Want to Sing Cabaret (Rowman & Littlefield 2020).

Seven students, including one joining remotely from San Francisco, spent five weeks mastering the history, skills, and techniques of cabaret. The theatrical format includes not only singing, but also the art of connecting with the audience, who are usually sitting at tables in a restaurant or nightclub setting. Sabella taught the course with co-instructor Sue Matuski and David Gaines, a New York-based pianist and arranger, who served as a musical director for the course.

“Cabaret performance technique is much different—it’s lyric-based and it’s more of the ‘acting-singer’ than it is like music theater,” Sabella said. “Part of the process for cabaret is the music is completely changeable—the only thing we keep is the lyrics. You want to change the key, you change it. You want to change the arrangement, you change it.”

The only thing that guides cabaret performers is their interpretation of the lyrics, he said.

“In your story of the song, you know, we ask the five W’s—Who you are talking to? What do you want from them? Why don’t they give it to you right away? Where are you and when is it—what time of day?” he said.

For example, Sabella said you would talk differently to your partner laying down before going to sleep than you would a friend in the middle of a packed cafe at 2 p.m.

At the end of the course, the students performed their own two to three song sets, including their own interpretations of songs, mini-monologues, and even some medleys.

David Wilson, a 2021 Fordham College at Lincoln Center student who graduated in May, but decided to take this course this summer, aims to star on Broadway. And this class performance, held in front of a small group of family, friends, and Fordham community members was the first time he performed live since March 2020.

Wilson, who had taken classes with Sabella for two years, said Sabella convinced him to take this course to give him an unique edge in auditions.

“Something that David repeats to me all the time is how much you can take from cabaret in terms of making the song your own, and simplifying it to the most basic way that you connect with songs, and how that makes you more marketable for Broadway,” he said. “Going into an audition with so many people who look like you, who sing the same things as you—at that point, how can you differentiate yourself? This class is so much about finding your way of making a song interesting.”

For Tori Sen, a rising senior in the Gabelli School of Business at Lincoln Center, a singing course wasn’t exactly what she thought she was signing up for.

“I’ve always been interested in arts, in general, on the side, even though my major is business,” said Sen, a dancer who initially thought the class would be focused on dance. ”And then I decided to stay in it for a challenge—I’ve never sung in front of people, only in private. So it was nerve wracking for me.”

But Sen said that the course opened her eyes to new ways of thinking and gave her a few skills she hopes to use both in business and performing.

“It definitely was challenging, but it was really fun,” she said. “There’s a lot of takeaways, like confidence boosters and vocal techniques that I’ve learned.”

Sen said that the hardest part was learning how to overcome the nerves.

“Every time I would open my mouth and my voice would shake—I was so nervous,” she said. “ I think this helped me overcome that and that was a really big deal.”

Matsuki said that after watching the students perform, she felt like a proud mom, particularly in seeing their growth from the start of the course.

“I was there as a proud mom and as an audience member, not the teacher anymore, and I think that’s why I got so emotional, because they were magnificent,” she said. “To watch them process our technique and to watch them really commit to a personal level of communication with their lyric—that’s what moved me.”

For the productive oriented, summertime represents a chance to sock away a few credits by taking summer courses, many of which consist of a four- to five-week session.

While the condensed courses may be intense, they’re also pretty convenient, said Tara E. Czechowski, PhD, dean of Fordham’s summertime session. Czechowski said that the selections, offered in two summer sessions, accommodate a variety of summertime schedules.

Many of the classes also fulfill course requirements, but professors tend to get a little more creative during the summer, said Czechowski.

One core course requirement for seniors on eloquentia perfecta will focus on selfie culture. The course, Dilemmas of the Modern Self, is being taught sociology professor Micki McGee, PhD.

“The course looks deeply into how we see ourselves today and to what extent this new media changes our understanding of ourselves,” said McGee. “We’ll look at ideas, like Descartes’ ‘I think therefore I am,’ and discuss whether that could be ‘I tweet therefore I am?’”

McGee said the course would look at how issues surrounding social media can take on serious personal and moral dimensions.

“Selfie culture includes the way we represent ourselves in all kinds of media—not just the images,” said McGee. “But at the heart are underlying issues of ‘How do you perceive yourself and what sort of self do you want to be?’”

McGee’s course is culturally timely, but several other course offerings will be pegged to events expected to unfold in the news, like political science professor Robert Hume’s Judicial Politics: SCOTUS Watch. The course, scheduled for June, is designed to coincide with the time the Supreme Court typically makes its landmark decisions.

Business professor Mark Conrad, PhD, will teach Business and Ethics of Sports, which he said will likely coincide with Tom Brady’s “deflategate” appeal. It will also take place just before Brazil Summer Olympics and the potential fallout of doping accusations lodged against several athletes expected to attend.

But the course’s focus extends well beyond players inside the stadium to the stadium itself, he said.

“We’ll look at the ethics of sustainability in stadium construction, as well as naming rights deals,” said Conrad.

Conrad said he plans to include guest speakers in person and on Skype to tackle subjects that range from labor injuries and concussions to gambling and fantasy sports.

On the communications side of sports will be Mike Plugh, PhD, who will survey sports reporting and writing, advertising, and public relations. The hybrid course, Sports Communication, takes place online as well as in class.

On the international front, Hamid Al-Bayati, PhD, who served as Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations from 2006-2013, will return this summer as an adjunct professor to teach United Nations and Political Leadership.

Fordham is offering two courses on humanitarianism to be taught by Alexander van Tulleken, MD, of Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs. The course offered during the first summer session will examine secular and faith-based NGOs based in New York City and the United Nations, and how they respond to crises that include famine, genocide, and displacement. The second session’s course will focus on global health and how those same agencies respond to epidemic disease and food security.

In the realm of the arts, English professor Rebecca Sanchez, PhD, will discuss modernist writers from the turn of the last century to the end of World War II, with a particular focus on American expressionism, industrialization, and the “fetishization of difficulty.”

And combining art and politics, political science professor Nicholas Tampio will bring back his popular summertime session on Political Theory in Popular Culture, which threads together scholarship and superheroes.

“I’m interested in the political aesthetics that the X-Men can help us see,” Tampio said.