RECENT NEWS
Technique Enrollment Policy
(1/24/08)
To ensure an optimal learning environment for all students, to ensure that Dance majors can meet graduation requirements in a timely manner, to ensure fairness for all students, and to make the best use of faculty time, the Department of Dance will follow the procedure detailed below for pre-registration in Fall, 2008 Ballet and Contemporary classes.
Department of Dance
Department Mission
The Department of Dance offers bachelors and masters degrees in a research-intensive university setting. We strive to teach students imaginative, critical, and technical skills essential to the creative process, scholarly inquiry, and professional engagement in the field. At the undergraduate level, we combine a liberal arts curriculum with professional preparation for a variety of careers in dance. All programs prepare students for further study and for the task of creating successful and productive lives as dance artists, educators, and scholars at the state, regional, national, and international levels.
Departmental Philosophy
At the Dance Department at UNCG, we believe that the field of dance needs many different kinds of professionals with diverse strengths and aesthetic points of view. Rather than trying to make a standardized product, we recognize that students come in as individuals, and seek to pursue diverse pathways and accomplish diverse outcomes. With our guidance, each person interweaves their own experiences to make a life in dance. We attempt to facilitate students´ journeys through a number of programs 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 knowledge as an important form of knowing, not just for dancers but for all people. We strive to give students an appreciation for both excellence and balance. Students need to expand their interests and possibilities, pushing their understanding of what might be achieved through a life in dance. At the same time, students need to recognize that dance is only part of a productive life. We try to help students identify their individual strengths, weaknesses, passions, and values, and facilitate the development of skills and attitudes necessary to achieve their goals.
We further believe that students need to do more than dance. They need to have other life experiences, in order to have something to say as an artist and to make connections between dance, the other arts, and life. We value our place in a liberal arts institution because we believe that development of an aesthetic point of view means developing a view of the world, which includes political, social, and moral perspectives. Dance is, by its nature, a community art, one which requires collaboration and cooperation. Students need to learn to play different roles at different times, understanding the importance of crew members, stage managers, teachers, performers, choreographers, informed audience members, critics, and others to the dance experience. We believe that students should develop a sense of responsibility for themselves and the communities in which they participate. Beyond the immediacy of the Department, we strive to make students aware of other communities of which they are a part, and their responsibility to support and respect others.
Departmental Goals
- To maintain a high standard of teaching within a curriculum which integrates teaching, scholarship, and artistry, and affirms the centrality of body knowledge and the experiential basis for learning.
- To maintain a student-centered program which facilitates diverse outcomes.
- To sustain a community which values individual and cultural differences.
- To offer nationally recognized graduate programs.
- To encourage faculty development.
- To engage in outreach to the community through public performances and other educational and artistic activities when possible and when it supports our mission.