On a Friday afternoon on the last day of May, Donna Faye Burchfield was sitting on her deck in Philadelphia when a newspaper notification popped up on her friend’s phone: University of the Arts, where Burchfield had been dean of the School of Dance since 2010, was closing its doors in a week—for good. Were […]
How politically engaged are today’s college dance students? And how are faculty responding to and evolving with shifting needs? As a teaching associate professor of dance at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, these questions have been at the top of my mind especially as election day is right around the corner. I spoke with three […]
With the fall semester rapidly approaching and university plans coming into focus, higher ed faculty members are likely drafting (and re-drafting) their syllabi—and wondering what a full semester’s worth of online or hybrid online/in-person dance courses will even look like. Take comfort in the fact that dance professors across the country are in the same […]
Betsy Brandt gets more than a few questions about what, exactly, she offers the choreographers she works with—the likes of Jennifer Monson and Sara Hook, to name a couple. “I help people make dances,” she says simply about her role as dance dramaturg. “Sometimes, it’s like being their composition teacher—except they know more than me, […]
Since she was hired in 2006 to create a dance program at Washington & Lee University in Virginia, Jenefer Davies has operated as, essentially, a one-woman show. She’s the only full-time faculty member (with regular adjunct support). Over the last 13 years, she has created a thriving program along with a performance company—at a school […]
It’s the middle of the semester and two dancers are sitting out of class, you’re worried about one student’s mental health and another has developed an eating disorder. Sound familiar? College can be a tumultuous time. To help address the additional demands of being a dance major, some schools have found strategies for enhancing wellness […]
When I went back to school last fall to earn my MFA, I was surprised by how much dance in higher education had changed since my undergraduate experience 10 years before—and how much it hadn’t. Diasporic dance forms, such as African and hip hop, for example, are now much more integral to curriculums, but ballet […]
It’s National Higher Education Day, and we are here to celebrate! From dance programs so famous that even your dog knows about them, to the hidden gems in the middle of the country that prepare students to go on to larger-than-life careers, we are grateful for schools that support the arts. To celebrate the day, […]
Paying for college, no matter what degree you graduate with, is a challenge for many students and their families. But majoring in dance has its own set of complications, because many are reluctant to go into serious debt without the security of knowing they’ll be able to pay that debt off quickly post-college. That doesn’t […]
To say Lisa Morgan wears more than one hat would be a gross understatement. For starters, she teaches a pedagogy course for dance majors at Colorado State University and heads the dance component of an arts-integration program (BRAINY) for local elementary students. She also runs a professional-development seminar for K–12 teachers who want to incorporate […]