Q: My tween is begging me to go to a faraway summer intensive, claiming “all my friends are going.” How do I know if she’s ready? A: It can feel like a rite of passage for serious dancers to attend an intensive at a major ballet school. They dance all day and often explore the […]
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 […]
While leading a rehearsal of Balanchine’s Serenade, Stacey Calvert can’t help but join in, marking at the front of the studio with a grin on her face. It’s a Friday morning at the University of South Carolina—where Calvert taught and staged works for 17 years—and the dancers are preparing for the annual spring performance, Ballet […]
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 […]
Space to rehearse and perform. Guest teaching gigs. Relationship building. Deepened college curriculum. Financial support. These are valuable gifts to artists and college departments alike. The CUNY Dance Initiative (CDI), now heading into its sixth year, successfully embraces and supports both artists and students, dance companies and theater/arts departments. They have become a model example […]
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 […]
As an artist in residence at the University of Maryland in College Park, Kendra Portier is in a unique position. After almost a decade of performing with David Dorfman Dance and three years earning her MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she’s using her two-year gig at UMD (through spring 2020) to “see […]
Growing up in New Jersey, Lisa Race trained with a memorable dance teacher: Fred Kelly, the younger brother of famous tapper Gene. “Fred would introduce our recitals,” she says. “He would always cartwheel down the stairs.” It wasn’t until years later, when Race was pursuing her master’s degree and chose to write a research paper […]
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 […]