Programs   >  Programs in the College of Performing Arts  
Contacts     Description     Program Objectives     Program Requirements

 

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Contacts

Donna Faye Burchfield \ dburchfield@uarts.edu \ 215.717.6580
Director

Bren Thomas \ bthomas@uarts.edu \ 215.717.6577
Assistant to the Director

School of Dance Office
Terra Building 3rd Floor | 215.717.6110 | School of Dance Website

Description

The School of Dance’s major course of study takes the depth and rigor of a discipline-based dance conservatory while engaging students in open discussions within their own practice, valuing their voices as capable of developing new and critical perspectives in dance. These strategies give way to student driven pathways and expand the ways students can access and think about the practices and techniques of making and performing dance.

It is divided into two parts: Foundation Series (freshman and sophomore years) and Portfolio & Research Series (junior and senior).

Studio Practice

All studio practice courses provide anatomically sound models for technical training in dance that consistently weave and reference both the historical and the emerging techniques, forms and styles through informed somatic practices.

Body Pathways

In Body Pathways, the dancer engages in conditioning and assessment, awareness for alignment, body placement and strength, experiential anatomy and varying somatic practices for sustaining the body in dance.

Thinking, Making, Doing (TMD)

Within the TMD courses, students will research and discuss how works of art get made, how motivations are discovered, explore intentions and directions, and make work of their own. Students will compose, improvise, discuss, write artist statements, and keep artist journals in an environment that encourages experimentation and risk taking. Material is developed both within and outside the assigned class time.

Performance Pedagogies of Dance (PODs)

 

PODS and their adjoining labs offer students the opportunity to make connections within and alongside performance experiences through multiple access points. An interdisciplinary system, PODs are designed to help students recognize the tools and methodologies used in their own creative and performance work. PODs, and their extended labs, are taught by dance department faculty, faculty from other departments, as well as working professionals outside the University, all of whom bring a level of expertise to their individual topic.

 

Capstone Courses

Sophomore Performance & Coaching Project, Senior Project & Critique, Senior Seminar

The capstones courses give students the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities to apply what they have learned. Through varied perspectives within the curriculum, there is an emphasis on defining and articulating personal aesthetics across disciplines, articulating opinions, and reflecting on their creative practice(s) in relationship to their peers and to the world. The Sophomore Performance & Coaching project culminates the Foundation Series. The Senior Project/Critique and Senior Seminar are capstone courses designed to be the culmination of the Portfolio & Research Series.

Program Objectives

The faculty of the School of Dance have developed five essential learning goals that help to shape the school’s curriculum and the young dance artist and professional.

• Mutuality:  Students will activate relationships in dance on personal, collective, regional and global levels.
• Relationship:  Students will engage with the world through multiple lenses of collaboration, exchange and difference.
• Expressivity:  Students will develop tools and ideas of expression to speak, write, and dance about/with/of/alongside.
• Sustainability:  Students will be immersed in anatomically sound technical training that consistently weaves and references both historical and emerging techniques, forms and styles through informed somatic practices.
• Resourcefulness:  Students will develop and sharpen skills of reciprocity, relationship and network building through consistent contact with professional artists in the expanded field both within their communities and in the world.

These learning goals are mapped across courses in six different categories: 1) Studio Practice, 2) Body Pathways, 3) Thinking, Making, Doing, 4) History, Theory and Criticism, 5) Capstone Experiences (Sophomore and Senior Projects), and  6) PODS (Performance Pedagogies of Dance).

Program Requirements (129 credits)