Spring Back Dance Concert
April 2008
Department Overview
Curriculum Overview
subUrbia by Eric Bogosian
February 2009
Our Theater curriculum offers a range of courses in acting, directing, history, theory, technical production, design and dramatic literature.The theater major incorporates study in all these areas with an individualized concentration, allowing each student to study a chosen discipline in depth. The Acting and Directing course sequences are especially intensive, and prepare professionally oriented students for graduate school.
We organize our Dance curriculum around four areas of study, allowing students to pursue dance from different perspectives: creation and performance, critical inquiry, physical techniques, and somatic studies. Majors take courses in each of the four categories to challenge and expand their perceptions of what it is to engage in the study of dance. Students develop a personalized course of study through the process of articulating their own goals and identifying courses that allow them to achieve the highest degree of proficiency in their chosen area.
Students who wish to combine theater and dance in unique ways can design an Interdisciplinary Performance Major.
Our curriculum is for both beginners and seasoned young performers. Students who want to use theater and dance as a way to enrich their education and their lives may begin their studies at an introductory level, choosing from a wide array of courses. Committed students who wish to focus on the performing arts as a professional career may enroll in upper-level classes after placing into those courses.
Performance activities abound. Faculty-directed and student-run theater and dance productions occur every semester. Students work closely with artists-in-residence, choreographers, guest directors, and specialists who offer workshops and classes lasting from a few days to a month. Students also have ample opportunities to study away or study abroad for a semester or a year.
Graduates of the Theater and Dance Program have continued their studies at such institutions as the Yale School of Drama, Cal Arts, Columbia University, L'Ecole Lecoq, Mills College, and the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Many have professional careers as dancers, actors, directors, choreographers, set designers, playwrights, art administrators, educators, and academics.
