The Dance Department at Wesleyan is a contemporary program with a global perspective. The program embraces classical forms from Bharata Natyam, Ghanaian, ballet, Javanese, and vernacular forms of jazz, hip hop, and Eastern European social dances, to experimental practices that fuse tradition and experimentation into new, contemporary forms.
Our mission is to cultivate artistry. The curriculum centers on the creative act – imagining, making, and doing. Our program is interdisciplinary, embodied, collaborative, and physically and intellectually rigorous; it aims to foster personal and social transformation.
The curriculum, faculty research, and pedagogy all center on the relationships between theory and practice, embodied learning, and the potential dance-making has to be a catalyst for social change. Within that rigorous context, students encounter a diversity of approaches to making, practicing, and analyzing dance in an intimate learning atmosphere.
The emphasis of the major is on creating original scholarship, be it choreographic or written, that views dance within a specific cultural context, interrogates cultural assumptions, and is informed by a critical and reflective perspective.
- Successful completion of two gateway courses.
- An admissions interview with the Prospective Major Advisor, Katja Kolcio.