Dance

Your classes will be led by passionate instructors who love dance as much as you do. From ballet to hip-hop, jazz to modern, you'll have the opportunity to learn from instructors with a variety of dance backgrounds and expertise. Click on the images below to meet faculty of the Dance program.

See More Faculty

Click on the images below to meet visiting artists of the Dance program.

This fall, the School of Dance will also host a dynamic programming series called the School for Temporary Liveness.
Learn more. 

Knowing Dance More Series
Fall 2019

September 18 | Orientation
September 25 - October 2 | School for Temporary Liveness
October 9 | Study Hall

Knowing Dance More events on September 18 and October 9 take place from 11:30-12:50pm in the Y Gym Dance Theater | 401 S. Broad St. Philadelphia, PA.

Curated by Lauren Bakst
University of the Arts School of Dance

September 18 | Orientation w. Lauren Bakst

In this Orientation, curator Lauren Bakst will introduce students to the School for Temporary Liveness and the ways they can participate.

September 25-October 2 | School for Temporary Liveness

The School for Temporary Liveness is a week-long series of performances, workshops, talks, conversations and new formats for study inhabiting the poetic frame of a school. Presented by University of the Arts School of Dance and supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the School for Temporary Liveness brings together an international roster of artists and scholars including nora chipaumire, Isabel Lewis, Rizvana Bradley, Jarrett Earnest, Brooke Holmes, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Colin Self, Jackie Wang and Simone White.

Housed within the Philadelphia Art Alliance and open to the public from 4 to 10 p.m. daily with a 24-hour cycle over the weekend, the School for Temporary Liveness invites anyone who participates to consider themselves a student, and to engage in new forms of spectatorship and ways of being together.

Learn more about the School for Temporary Liveness.

October 9 | Study Hall

In Study Hall, students will critically reflect on their experiences in the School for Temporary Liveness through temporary formations that animate the roles of the teacher, student and witness.

Sample Courses in the Dance Major

About the Curriculum

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).

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.
• Relationality: 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: Studio Practice; Body Pathways;  Thinking, Making, Doing; History, Theory and Criticism; Capstone Experiences; and Performance Pedagogies of Dance.

To explore the full curriculum, click here.

Explore profiles of some of our recent graduates. Click each image below to learn more.

Dance (MFA)

With the goal of educating thinking artists as world citizens, The University of the Arts in Philadelphia sets in motion a new Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in Dance that extends the context of learning from the studio, theater and classroom to the international festival environment as a space for learning.

Explore Dance MFA Program