Dance Program

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY PRACTICE?

Practice is about a kind of conscious action where we become aware of what we’re doing and how we affect others. It’s heartfelt repetition that includes deep reflection where we slow down or pause, we notice
what’s happening, and then we make changes to our approach if needed... and then it’s about going at it again, knowing that if we really pay attention, it will never happen the same way twice.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY RELATE?

By Relate we mean that we’re always in these two-way “conversations” where people, places, things, and ideas are constantly influencing each other. We study relationships between different aspects of ourselves, we notice our relationships with each other, relationships between ourselves and the dances we’re making, between dance and other disciplines, and between dance and what’s happening culturally, socially, and politically in our world at any given moment.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY MANIFEST?

Everyone knows that you can’t buy a dance and take it home with you, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t making things. To manifest is to turn our creative processes into products. We engage more deeply when we hold ourselves accountable to that moment when the audience shows up and gives us their attention. With that kind of focus and care, our practices begin to create embodied knowledge. Our writing communicates. Our performances make people think and feel and laugh and cry. And that’s how something as ephemeral as dance really starts to make a tangible difference in the world.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ARTICULATE?

We learn to Articulate what our bodies know, what’s on our minds, and in our hearts, and what we want to share about what dance is and what it can do. Articulation is about expressing ourselves fluently and clearly and this can happen through movement and even through the words, both written and spoken, that we use to describe dance and our experience of dancing. When we better articulate what dance is and can be, our dances become more relevant, and our dancing has a greater potential to really impact people.

Students develop their ability to learn and know through dancing through our technique classes include classical, contemporary, social and popular dance forms. In these classes, students practice what they know and they expand their movement potentials by dancing at the edge of what they know. 

• Dance Technique(s) Praxis I & II
• Applied Dance Technique(s) I & II
• Contact Improvisation I & II
• Yoga I & II
• Somatics I & II
• Embodied Anatomy
• Body Modalities

Our composition series studies traditional choreographic forms and experiments with how dances are made. In these classes, there is exposure to a wide range of dance artists and methods for making dances. This education and experience give students a context to both expand and define their artistic trajectories as dancemakers.

• Dancemaking Praxis I & III
• Dancemaking Lab I, II, & III
• Senior Capstone (as a choreographer)

Even though the stakes are higher, our students practice performance as a continuation of the creative process of dancemaking. Performances serve as laboratories to share, develop, and be seen in our research. 

• Performance Forum I & II
• University Dance Company
• Senior Capstone (as a performer)

Ways of examining the principles, practices and politics of dance/ing through historical, contemporary, and interdisciplinary lenses. Our dance theory courses aim to cultivate critical and creative dance artists-activists-scholars.

• Introduction to Dance (General Education Course)
• Performance Writing (GWAR Writing Requirement)
• Dance History: Contemporary Global Contexts
• Dance in World Cultures (General Education Course)
• Dance Pedagogy
• GE Dance 281 Dance, Identity, Pop Culture 
   
• GE Dance 383 K-pop Dance