Master of Arts in Dance
The MA in Dance is a 36-hour degree. Options are available in Dance Education with or without licensure for teaching in public schools, or Dance Theories and Practices. The MA in Dance Education is available in a largely-distance format.
UNCG graduate programs in dance offer rich experiences in artistry and scholarship that entwine practice, creative expression, and critical investigation. Understanding arises from opportunities to investigate dancing through experiential and analytical lenses such as bodily training, improvisation, performance, choreography, aesthetics, education, somatics, history, and cultural and social critique.
Our students work with faculty members who are active artists and scholars, and who mentor student engagement in the dance professions, as well as guiding their work in the department. We offer an exceptionally strong mentorship program in teaching, including the teaching of dance technique, choreography and performance, dance appreciation and history, and the theories and practices of dance teaching in public education. We prepare students for lifelong learning in dance, to integrate practice and critical investigation, and to engage in dance as a means of understanding and of enacting positive change in themselves and their communities.
Department Mission & Philosophy
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.
It is our strong conviction that dance thrives through the integrated efforts of many different kinds of professionals with diverse strengths and perspectives. To enter and remain successful within this field, students need to learn to play such distinct roles as crewmember, stage manager, teacher, performer, choreographer, informed audience member, researcher, scholar, and critic. We recognize the fact that each student possesses unique capacities and inclinations and, through our focused instruction and guidance both inside and outside of the classroom, provide each student with the means to create a lifetime of successful involvement with dance.
We facilitate students' journeys through degree programs and extra-curricular activities 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-based knowledges as vital forms of knowing, not just for dancers but also for all people.
We strive to inspire students toward both excellence and balance. Students need to expand their interests and possibilities, and cultivate a vision of what might be achieved through a life in dance. At the same time, it is important to remember that there are components of a productive life besides dance. Students need other life experiences to develop their voices as artists, scholars, and teachers; they need to make connections between dance, other artistic and intellectual practices, and social and cultural spheres, so that they may develop a view of the world that includes political, social, and moral perspectives. With these ideas in mind, we help students to identify domains outside of dance and beyond the immediacy of the Department in which their strengths, passions, and values may flourish and benefit not only themselves but also others.
