Burchfield says these questions help reorient students’ capacity to put their thinking first. At UArts’ School of Dance, students in the BFA program are emboldened with agency, artistry, and a fine-tuned ability to advocate for themselves in the professional world.

Cultivating Artists With Agency

Around 75 BFA students graduate from UArts’ School of Dance each year. For each of those dancers, their education starts and ends with their agency. “We don’t tell them, ‘You have to be ___, you have to be ___,” Burchfield says. Instead, dancers’ futures are shaped by students themselves.

“A lot of encouraging agency is encouraging students to speak to their own experience, to ask questions,” says Shayla-Vie Jenkins, assistant professor of dance and former performer with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. In her classes, student curiosity is a priority. “A lot of times it’s turning toward a classmate and working through the material together,” she says, “and then I encourage questions and elicit feedback in the moment.”

This approach, Burchfield says, is not to be confused with an unstructured or non-rigorous curriculum. All students must enroll in courses which expose them to UArts’ full spectrum of dance faculty and performance opportunities, many of which take on the rigor of a conservatory approach. In first and second years, these courses compose UArts’ Foundation Series; for the latter years, it’s Portfolio & Research.

How dancers learn to find themselves within this structure is what makes a difference. “People ask things like, ‘How do you prepare them for the real world?’ ” Burchfield says. “I always like to say, ‘Well, this is the real world.’ If a student really wants to be a filmmaker and a dancer, that is the real world. So then what does that mean? You’re going to have to divide your time; you’re going to have to figure out where you need it.”

A Curriculum Built on Reflection

During the school year, dance majors gather every five weeks for reflection. “It’s a kind of intentional pause,” Burchfield says, explaining it as a time for students to move outside of their everyday experiences and ask, “What have I learned?”

In the first and second years, these reflections occur when the dancers rotate teachers while staying in the same classes, exposing them to the breadth of UArts’ diverse faculty while still carving out time to notice their own artistic growth.

During the reflections, which are facilitated by associate dean Jen McGinn, faculty are not present, giving students the freedom to be honest with each other, and also themselves. Wendell Gray, a 2015 UArts alumnus, says these pauses gave him the space to pay attention to how he was growing as an artist.

“You see other people’s agency in real time. You see how people are learning ideas and taking control of what they do,” says Gray, who is now a Brooklyn-based artist and choreographer, currently working with Joanna Kotze, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Miguel Gutierrez, and others. His professional work remains directly influenced by his time at UArts. “It’s amazing, talking about what we do and how it extends to areas of philosophy and wisdom, understanding ways of being,” he says.

When Representation Is Not an Afterthought 

UArts’ pathway to student empowerment is aided by the diversity represented within the School of Dance as well as the Philadelphia arts district that the school calls home.

“Our student population is majority students of color,” Burchfield says, adding that the faculty makeup is similarly diverse. “Being in Philadelphia, it reminds me that America is made of diversities and differences—racially, ethnically, economically,” she continues. “There is an intentionality in our pedagogy. It’s an intention in the choices we make about who sets work on our students, who is teaching dance history—all of it. There is a social practice embedded in the dance practices.”

Burchfield also notes the city’s strong history of queer acceptance, and she emphasizes that UArts reflects such attitudes in the affirmation of its students and faculty.

Using Performance as Education

In third- and fourth-year students’ Pedagogies of Performance classes, the dancers ask questions such as, “How can you use this as a practice of intention? How can you think about what it’s like to move toward something you don’t recognize as familiar?” Burchfield, Jenkins, and Gray all agree: It’s experiences like these that teach students how to pay attention.

“I’m not just there to replicate the steps and to do them well,” Jenkins says. “I’m also being engaged physically and I’m also engaged critically in whatever the content is. I have an opinion. I have a point of view I can express.”

The resulting atmosphere, Burchfield says, cultivates a spirit of risk-taking that stays with students long after they’ve become alumni.

“Usually there’s no right or wrong,” Jenkins says. “It’s about the process. It’s really about the process.”

Joining the University of the Arts Family

Burchfield encourages anyone interested in UArts’ School of Dance to check out the program’s free Winter Dance Series, in person in Philadelphia November 30 through December 2 (or via its virtual broadcast online December 12 and 13—see @uartsschoolofdance for more details). This year’s program will feature BFA students in works by Bill T. Jones, Dinita and Kyle Clark, Gary Reagan, Katie Swords Thurman, Mark Caserta, Gary W. Jeter II, Jesse Zaritt, Juel D. Lane, Sydney Donovan, and Uwazi Zamani—many of whom are full-time UArts faculty members.

Audition workshops for UArts take place both in person and virtually. During the sessions, current students join the group of auditioners for a holistic approach to class.

Gray encourages prospective students to approach the process without too many nerves. “They really looked at me,” he remembers of his own audition. “I felt that desire. I just felt like a person.”

Learn more about the BFA application process here, as well as UArts’ MFA in dance.

The post How University of the Arts Teaches Dancers to “Pay Attention Differently”—and Why It Works appeared first on Dance Magazine.

This fall, the celebrated collaboration that grew out of that conversation, the joint Ailey/Fordham BFA Program, marks its 25th anniversary. Two and a half decades ago, the two institutions opened their doors to the first cohort of students that would receive conservatory-level dance training paired with a robust liberal arts education.

“It was pretty radical to create a program that was both serious about dance and serious about academics,” says Ana Marie Forsythe, a longtime Ailey School teacher who helped launch the program and led it briefly after Jefferson’s death in 2010. If anything, its immense success has proven the notion Jefferson championed, says Forsythe, that “dancers are smart enough, they can do two things at the same time.”

Expanding Potential

When Fordham College at Lincoln Center started welcoming students in 1968, the campus “opened in the center of the arts world,” Bristow says—or, more accurately, the new center of the performing arts that was still taking shape. Fordham was adjacent to New York City Ballet’s new home and surrounded by other leading arts organizations. By the time Bristow became­ dean in 1991, Ailey had moved into its headquarters half a block away on 61st Street.

Despite its location, there was a sense among Fordham faculty that “the university really hadn’t taken advantage of its potential to expand in all of the arts,” Bristow says. “There was virtually no music program, and there was no dance program.” NYCB dancers had been showing up to take evening courses for years, and Fordham had extended a similar arrangement to Ailey company members. Professors understood that dancers were “terrific to teach in academic subjects,” says Bristow. “They knew how to learn.”

On the Ailey side, “we discovered that sometimes dancers would stop dancing because they or their parents wanted them to go to college,” Forsythe says. Or, after years of performing, dancers would have to find a place to start over as freshmen. A partnership between the two institutions would mean young artists wouldn’t have to choose between college and a dance career.

It didn’t hurt that the university’s president at the time, Joseph O’Hare, was a dance fan who admired Judith Jamison, the former Ailey superstar who’d taken the reins as the company’s artistic director. When Bristow and Jefferson brought the idea to their respective leadership, they found support on both sides. It took about two years of planning with a team—working out a financial structure, applying for accreditation, setting up a curriculum and admissions criteria—to make it happen.

“When the first class arrived, it was the realization of a dream for Denise and me,” says Bristow.

Developing Dancers and Global Citizens

Students in the BFA program have always trained across multiple genres and techniques, such as ballet, pointe, Horton, Graham-based modern, Limón, West African dance, jazz, and partnering. They take courses in dance composition, dance history, music, and anatomy and kinesiology, and keep up a full academic load that spans English, social science, philosophy, history, and foreign language. “We’re not only training dancers,” says Melanie Person, co-director of The Ailey School and head of the BFA program since 2011. “At the core of it, we’re developing who a dancer is,” she says. “Not only as an artist—as a person, a critical thinker, a global citizen of the world.”

The central challenges of the Ailey/Fordham BFA Program have long been balancing hectic schedules, managing the cost of tuition for a private university degree, continuing to strive for diversity in the student body, and keeping up with an ever-evolving dance landscape. To that end, Person says, they’re always thinking about how to introduce students to contemporary forms, movement languages, and choreographic voices. The program’s enormous breadth “gave me such a sense of versatility as a dancer,” says Danelle Morgan, who became a Radio City Rockette even before she graduated in 2007 and has since returned to teach workshops at Ailey in partnership with the Rockettes. It was important to Morgan to be part of a diverse community while getting a college degree. “Not only did I feel accepted,” she says, “but I also felt that I could lean into learning more about other people and about other cultures. It opened up my world.”

Students have plenty of performance opportunities and regular exposure to Ailey’s main and second companies. Ricardo Zayas, a 2005 graduate who apprenticed with Complexions Contemporary Ballet as a junior and joined Ailey II as a senior, says the program allowed him “to test the waters of what it was like to become a working professional.” Zayas has gone on to dance with companies like Alonzo King LINES Ballet as well as in TV and movies (Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story) and on Broadway (most recently Moulin Rouge!). “My resumé had begun building itself well before my graduation,” he says, “and I’m so thankful for that.”

Celebrating Alums

Jacquelin Harris recalls being starstruck as a student seeing Ailey company dancers in the elevator. “I remember them always taking a moment to say hi to us and be so kind and human,” says Harris, who graduated with her BFA in 2014 and pursued a second major in math. She joined Ailey II and then the main company, where she continues to shine today. “I love being able to be on the other side and hopefully give them a little bit of what I received when I was in school.”

The BFA program’s success can be measured by the success of its graduates, who are thriving as attorneys and professors—and, of course, as dancers. It’s hard to go anywhere without running into a former student or seeing their name in a program, Person says. Or as Harris puts it: “It feels like everywhere I go, I see my family.”

The festivities in the works to mark the 25th anniversary coalesce around the idea of bringing alums back home. Person is putting together a special performance for the spring and plans to arrange for alums to teach master classes, offer choreographic workshops, and participate in panels. “My hope is that they realize that the doors are always open, not just for this 25th anniversary,” she says. The celebration of this milestone, she says, is ultimately about “realizing the full potential of this program and the artists in it—those who’ve come before and those who will come after.”

The post The Ailey/Fordham Dance BFA Turns 25 appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“There’s a real stigma of ‘If you’re going to do something else, you can’t dance’ or ‘If you’re going to dance, you can’t do anything else,’ ” says Alia Carponter-Walker, who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and trained at The Ailey School. But Carponter-Walker chose to do both: She attended Skidmore College, graduating in 2016 with a double major in dance and international affairs, plus a minor in Spanish. “I love dancing, and I’m not giving up dancing. But there’s also so much more of who I am,” she says.

For many dancers, the right college path is a mixed one, where dance is one component in a combination of majors and minors. It’s a choice that allows them to explore diverse interests, discover unexpected intersections, and deepen their engagement and mastery on multiple fronts.

“They don’t want to just do one thing, and I love that atti­tude,” says Jennifer Salk, an associate professor and former chair of the dance department at the University of Washington, where about 80 percent of dance majors graduate with an additional major. Salk relishes seeing students synthesize what they’re learning in different arenas and become good citizens who will, each in their own way, contribute to society and the arts. “I love watching our students graduate with a bigger view of the world,” she says.

Double Life

Like Carponter-Walker, Sidney Ramsey knew from the outset that she wanted to double-major in college. She was drawn to the University of Southern California for its nascent BFA program and equally excellent academics. In 2021, she became the first graduate from the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance to double up, earning a BA in health and human sciences (and a minor in psychology).

“It’s very easy when you’re in this conservatory-style program to feel like you’re in a bit of a vacuum,” Ramsey says. “Sometimes your whole identity feels wrapped into just dance.” With the mix, “there was a busyness to it and a balance to it,” she says, which helped her maintain her sense of self, perspective, and well-being.

But the path isn’t always immediately obvious. Mikaela Mallin, an aspiring research scientist, missed dance too much after stopping her first semester, and ended up graduating from the University of Iowa with a dual degree in dance and biomedical sciences in 2019. Swetha Prabakaran, a classically trained bharatanatyam dancer, thought she might, at best, join a club or take class once a week at University of California, Berkeley, but ultimately majored in both computer science and dance and performance studies.

Every student who opts into multiple courses of study has their own experience, but common among them are long days and packed schedules—sometimes quite literally requiring them to run from one end of campus to another, as Prabakaran did. There are logistical conundrums to solve when classes conflict. There are extracurriculars, jobs, social lives, and sleep to consider. And there are priorities to juggle and tradeoffs to make, like when Ramsey realized she couldn’t take her foundational psych class and repertory one semester.

Although students do it all while adjusting to a new environment and independence, Carponter-Walker points out that the rest isn’t entirely new for students who were devoted to dance before college. If you’ve balanced a full high school course load with a busy studio schedule, you’ve already had a taste of the life of a double major.

Intersections and Influences

Students often bring concepts and ideas from other areas of study to their choreography, says Nancy Lushington, associate professor and chair of the dance department at Marymount Manhattan College, which encourages additional majors and minors. And dance and other fields can end up overlapping and informing students’ experiences in unexpected ways.

Maurice Ivy joked with friends that “I majored in extracurriculars, and I minored in everything else.” In reality, he graduated from Duke University in 2016 with a major in global cultural studies, a minor in dance, and a certificate in film, all while performing and choreographing with a multicultural dance group, interning at the American Dance Festival, and more.

Dance gave him an identity on campus. His goal was always to dance professionally after school, but he found he thrived in inter­disciplinary spaces, and began thinking about dance more expan­sively. “My classes started to inform my choreography,” he says, and the content and themes he wanted to explore. One solo he made drew on an Indian cinema course, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and other influences. “It all started bleeding together,” he says, and “felt like one major instead of three different little things.”

Though her two majors at first felt disparate and disconnected, Prabakaran found that the tactical approach she honed for computer science projects helped her bring her choreographic visions to life. On the flip side, the diverse perspectives and critical lens she got from dance and performance studies made her a more effective, ethical, and empathetic technologist.

When Mallin had science-related breakthroughs, it was often right after modern class. The movement, she says, “would allow for some memory processing or reorganization or restructuring of my biology principles that I was learning, or a question I was working on in the lab.” Her dual degree helped dispel false assumptions about the type of work that requires creativity versus the type of work that requires logic and order. And two interdisciplinary projects she was involved in—using dance to explore climate change and autonomous vehicles—helped her realize that dance is a powerful way to communicate about science.

Postgrad

Students who choose a mix of majors and minors become alums poised to navigate careers that combine multiple interests and skill sets. They “tend to have a different engagement with what they’re studying,” Lushington says, and it “makes them more hireable in whatever field they end up going into, makes their choices broader, just opens their eyes.”

They might dance professionally first, like Ramsey, who is currently with a ballet company in Saarbrücken, Germany, but eyeing grad school in the future. Or mix performance with administration and production, like Ivy, who earned a master’s in live-experience design after undergrad. He works as a programming associate at Harlem Stage, is a part-time video jockey, and has danced with Seán Curran Company and in Hypnotique at The McKittrick Hotel.

Maybe they’ll continue down an academic path while taking class recreationally, like Mallin, a PhD candidate doing cancer research at Johns Hopkins. She collaborated with a psychiatrist filmmaker on Facing Shadows, a dance film about depression, and hopes to continue developing dance as a means of scientific communication. (You can bet she’ll submit to the Dance Your Ph.D. contest.)

Or they might infuse dance into their day-to-day work, like Carponter-Walker, now the director of equity and community life at The Hewitt School. She hopes to use music, dance, and culture to educate students about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and has coached student dance teams, all while dancing herself with choreographers including Fredrick Earl Mosley.

As all of these artists have realized, even postgrad, it still doesn’t have to be either/or. “The way my brain works, I really need both,” says Prabakaran, a technical product manager by day who’s danced and choreographed on the side since graduating in 2021, including assisting with a UC Berkeley project probing the intersections between choreography and technology. “I have to scratch the itch in both ways to be happy.”

The post Majors and Minors That Enrich a Dance Degree appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Deciding to Switch

After completing her freshman year at Point Park University, Ashleigh McGown attended a summer intensive at the American Dance Festival. One thing in particular stood out for her: how differently other students felt about their college programs. “I was around so many people who were in love with their school and their college experience,” says McGown, “and I had a realization that I wasn’t feeling that.” Some of those students were from University of the Arts in Philadelphia. McGown’s mentor Catie Leasca, a UArts alum, suggested she look into that school’s dance program. McGown conferred with faculty and quickly completed the audition process. She submitted application materials by the beginning of August, was accepted into UArts the week before the semester started and decided to transfer.

McGown was drawn to UArts because she says the dance program better aligned with her learning style. “For studio practice classes, you go through cycles of teachers instead of having one teacher for the entire semester,” she says. Her first semester, McGown danced with 12 different faculty in ballet, jazz, modern and hip-hop courses, an experience that she credits with greatly improving her skills as a dancer.

For Alli Tomsik, transferring made it possible to attend what had originally been her first-choice school, the University of Hartford, where she is now a junior. After completing one semester at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Tomsik knew the modern-focused dance program wasn’t right for her and that she wanted more ballet-based training. “It was hard to leave my friends and the school,” she says, “but I knew in the long run I wasn’t going to be happy at UMass and that it wasn’t going to satisfy my career needs.” Tomsik decided to take a semester off and reaudition for Hartford.

Taking Credit(s)

Because each school has different rules and procedures, transferring credits from one university to another can be a complex process, sometimes propelling students forward and other times setting them back. For Tomsik, it was the latter. While her academic and general education courses transferred, the dance technique classes she took at UMass did not, as Hartford requires students to take four years of ballet and modern specifically at their institution. Because of this rule, Tomsik will graduate a year later than she had originally planned, a change that was only possible because she received extra scholarships.

In contrast, McGown will graduate early because of her transfer credits. All of McGown’s credits transferred from Point Park to UArts, including her technique classes. The 18-credit semesters she took her freshman year at Point Park translated to one and a half years of credits at UArts, meaning she can graduate a semester early. Although finances were a concern for McGown during the transfer process, scholarships, plus cutting a semester, helped her feel confident in her decision.

Looking back, both McGown and Tomsik­ wished they had worried less about the decision and been more patient with themselves while adjusting to a new program. “If you do transfer, it might not be perfect right away, and you have to give it time to settle in your body and into a new routine,” says McGown. Even though the process was challenging at times, both dancers are glad they transferred and feel they are now at the right place. “It’s a hard choice, and there’s an uncertainty to it,” says Matteson. “The challenge is to recognize how brave your choice is to transfer.”

Transfer Tips

From University of the Arts associate professor Paul Matteson

• Visit the school and take classes to feel out the program. While you’re there, talk with other transfer students about their experiences.
• Look into important details, such as how financial aid and housing (and finding a roommate) work, and how they’re similar to or different from your current school.
• Talk with a faculty member or administrator about which credits will transfer and which will not.

The post What to Consider Before Transferring Colleges as a Dance Major appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Find Maturity and Confidence

Not every high school graduate is ready to go straight into dancing professionally at 18, which makes college the natural next step for those looking to discover who they are in a safe environment. “This extra time in college and maturing has really strengthened me as a person,” says Bethany Armistead, a senior dance major at Towson University. “I feel so much more ready to go into the professional world and to be able to stand my ground on things that are important to me.”

Learn to Work With Others

No matter what career path dancer majors end up pursuing, the collaborative and interdisciplinary opportunities presented by projects, classes and extracurricular activities teach them to work well with others postgraduation. “Learning how to be creative and vulnerable in an interdisciplinary environment is critical for anyone,” says Mann.

Accept Constructive Criticism

Feedback is an unavoidable aspect of any job, and dancers are experts at accepting corrections and criticism. “Dancers are so used to applying corrections and making improvements on the spot,” says Jin Lee Hanley, chair of the dance department at Palm Beach Atlantic University. “This is applied in life, and it is really rewarding to see.”

Develop Leadership Skills

Choreographing in college has helped Armistead build a network and grow her organizational and leadership skills. “Even if you’re going outside the realm of dance, there’s so many skills, like networking, leadership and confidence, that I found in my own journey as a dance major that will carry into any other profession,” she says.

Proudly Present Yourself

“When you study dance, you also learn about how to present yourself in public, and it’s a very important skill,” Mann says. College helps students confidently demonstrate their skills physically, orally and in writing. Both Mann and Hanley require oral presentations for certain courses to teach dancers how to verbalize their ideas—not just dance them.

Defending Your Dance Major

Susan Mann, professor of dance at Towson University, has had many dancers come into her office and say their parents want them to double-major because being a dance major isn’t enough. But she encourages students to use their time in college to pursue their passions and turn them into a career. “This is the beginning of their dream, and I always advise them to follow their dreams,” she says.

At Palm Beach Atlantic University, dance department chair Jin Lee Hanley encourages students to use the presentation skills they have learned through studying dance to inspire others to see the benefits of a dance major. “All the things that you have learned, share and verbalize with your parents,” she says. “And you have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in dance first.”

A Versatile Foundation

A dance major is about much more than just technique and choreography. Coming into college, performing may be your number-one passion, but there are many routes to discover that you might not expect. Because of the versatile skill set dancers have, they can become fitness instructors, studio owners, company founders, dance psychologists, physical therapists—other dance majors have gone into medicine, business and finance. “Open yourself up to as many opportunities as you can and see where you end up at the end of four years, because it could be somewhere very different from where you start,” advises Bethany Armistead, a senior in dance at Towson University.

The post 5 Soft Skills Dance Majors Learn appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Though the university had begun a retrenchment process in January, the dance program had widespread support among university stakeholders—and no one thought the school would eliminate the only dance major in the state of Arkansas.

So the news in early May that the university’s chancellor Christy Drale had recommended the dance program be completely cut came as a shock to faculty members and students alike, who had braced themselves for reductions but not elimination.

Photo by Benjamin Crain, courtesy of Anderson

The post The Only Dance Degree Program in Arkansas Is in Danger of Closing appeared first on Dance Magazine.

—Burned-Out Dancer, New York, NY

Why not rethink what a good work ethic entails? Part of being a diligent dancer is taking care of your body with smart recovery strategies. If you’re working hard all of the time, you’ll likely end up running yourself down, and you won’t be able to perform at your best. However, if you start focusing more on recovery, you should return to the studio feeling extra refreshed and engaged.

During breaks throughout your dance day, increase your mental and physical reserves with a combination of the following:

• taking short naps
• listening to music
• rolling out
• lying down with your legs up sans shoes to reduce swelling

Photo by Nathan Sayers

At night, aim for nine or more hours of sleep, and don’t forget to eat regular meals and snacks that fuel your body. Weekly rejuvenating activities, like massage and acupuncture, are equally important. With practical strategies like these, your reputation as a role model should remain intact.

Send your questions to Dr. Linda Hamilton at
advicefordancers@dancemedia.com.

The post Headed Toward Burnout? Here's How to Rethink Your Work Ethic appeared first on Dance Magazine.