Department of Dance
PHILOSOPHY - MA Grad Handbook
It is our strong conviction that dance thrives through the integrated efforts of many different kinds of professionals with diverse strengths and perspectives. To enter and remain successful within this field, students need to learn to play such distinct roles as crew member, stage manager, teacher, performer, choreographer, informed audience member, researcher, scholar, and critic. We recognize the fact that each student possesses unique capacities and inclinations and, through our focused instruction and guidance both inside and outside of the classroom, we provide each student with the means to create a lifetime of successful involvement with dance.
We facilitate students' journeys through degree programs and extra-curricular activities that have as their center the lived experience of dancing, by which we mean dancing with full engagement, awareness, and presence—an experience that is meaningful and powerful. We recognize body-based knowledges as vital forms of knowing, not just for dancers but for all people.
We strive to inspire students toward both excellence and balance. Students need to expand their interests and possibilities, and cultivate a vision of what might be achieved through a life in dance. At the same time, it is important to remember that there are components of a productive life besides dance. Students need other life experiences to develop their voices as artists, scholars, and teachers; they need to make connections between dance, other artistic and intellectual practices, and social and cultural spheres, so that they may develop a view of the world that includes political, social, and moral perspectives. With these ideas in mind, we help students to identify domains outside of dance and beyond the immediacy of the Department in which their strengths, passions, and values may flourish and benefit not only themselves but also others.