Welcome
Welcome to Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Dance and Choreography. VCU Dance is a place where dance is happening on a vibrant and creative level throughout the curriculum and beyond. We offer an intensive Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in pre-professional dance study focusing on modern dance and choreography with many opportunities to perform and present creative work. Our faculty members are professionally active artists dedicated to creating a technically demanding, intellectually stimulating and creatively challenging artistic environment. We are looking for talented, highly motivated, disciplined and creative dancers to join our artistic community of individuals interested in shaping the future of the field.
With a student/faculty ratio of 10-to-1, and a strong sense of community, VCU also offers the advantages of a large university with its many departments, cultural events and urban atmosphere. At the same time, the dance program of eighty dance majors offers individual student/faculty interaction. Our guest artist program is unusually strong and in the 2003-2004 academic year includes Donald McKayle, Clay Taliaferro, the José Limón Company, Gerri Houlihan, Nick Cave, and Joanna Mendl Shaw with Dancing with Horses. It is a supportive, but rigorous, environment in which students develop as artists and lay the groundwork for launching professional dance careers.
Our alumni are performing, teaching and presenting their choreography in cities across the United States and Europe including New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Istanbul and Amsterdam to name a few. As this relatively young department passes its twenty year mark, our alumni are becoming creative leaders in the field: Paule Turner and Richard Move were recently featured in Dance Magazine as among the Top 25 to watch. In addition to performing, our alumni are successfully developing dance companies, coordinating community dance organizations, running dance studios, pursuing graduate study in dance and teaching in schools, community centers and universities.
The application process to the Department of Dance and Choreography is a three-step process:
- complete a university application
- complete a School of the Arts application
- attend a Department of Dance and Choreography audition
If you are a transfer student or international student, please see additional information on the application process. The Student Computer Initiative requires all incoming freshman students, and freshman or sophomore transfer students, to own a computer that meets the minimum standards set by the university.
Selecting dance as a major in college is a brave and exciting choice. Students who graduate from VCU Dance are technically skilled, creative dance artists who are able to:
- creatively solve problems,
- collaborate with others,
- communicate verbally and non-verbally,
- direct groups of people,
- follow detailed instructions,
- create and implement plans with timelines and deadlines, and
- ... reach for dreams and follow through on goals.
These are skills necessary to a professional dancer as well as in many other aspects of life. Finding the right program that suits individual interests and ambitions is very important. As you visit our website, feel free to e-mail us at dance@vcu.edu with your questions.
Sincerely,
James Frazier
Chair, VCU Department of Dance and Choreography
Virginia Commonwealth University
School of the Arts
Department of Dance and Choreography
dance@vcu.edu
Date Last Modified: 9/5/2008