What you will study
By the time you graduate you'll have gained real-life experience and skills of what it is linked to working in the dance industry and completed projects that will help kick-start your career. You will do this through learning, making, performing, watching, and discussing dances in new ways, using eye-opening perspectives and developing your professional and employability skills.
As you progress, you will work on projects that draw together different strands of your learning. Across the three years of the course, you will have increasing independence in the design and delivery of these projects.
Year 1
Year 1 focuses on developing your skills, knowledge and understanding. You will be introduced to the dance industry and set a plan for what you need to do to support your career aspirations. You will develop your technical and performance skills in a range of dance styles and apply this to your choreographic work. dance technique and knowledge of. You will also learn about the history of dance, anatomy and dance training.
Core modules
Dance Techniques and Cultures 1
60 credits
This module provides students with the opportunity to further develop their technical and performance skills through engagement with learning, developing, refining and performance of dance techniques from contrasting styles (such as hip hop and contemporary dance styles). Students will learn through intensive practical classes led by professionals in the field, accompanied by seminars to support their ability to critically reflect on their development. There will be regular opportunities to present their work, experimenting with a variety of communication technologies and reaching multiple audiences.
The intensive technical training offered in this module will allow students to expand their vocabulary and increase their fitness level and movement dynamics, working with more challenging and advanced material. Students will continue to engage in reflective practice for personal and professional development. By proposing an integrated approach that blends technical and performance training with an understanding of the role that context and perspective play in shaping and communicating movement, the module aims to equip students with practical tools to become sector leaders and cultural advocates for dance.
Creating Dance 1
30 credits
This module is designed to develop students' knowledge and understanding of a diverse and inclusive range of fundamental choreograph tools, devices, structures and practices to enable them to create, and perform short choreographic works and start to envision their artistic voice. This module will draw from a diverse range of dance styles and directly encourage students to be adaptable and draw from a range of dance techniques within their practice. Students will be encouraged to use improvisation as a practice for risk taking and developing ideas and exploring a range of source material for performances, such as, visual art, current affairs and music. Reference will be made to the historical development of choreographic practice as well as current choreographic trends and draws on the work of practitioners to enable students to contextualise their work. Students will be encouraged to develop self-practice and independence through the exploration of frameworks analysing movement, reflective practice in the choreographic studio and models for self and peer feedback.
Dance Industry 1: professional skills and personal development
30 credits
This module is designed to help students develop key knowledge and understanding of professional pathways within the dance sector. It will offer opportunities to engage with leading industry professionals through case studies to facilitate an in-depth understanding of professional practices and global contextual challenges. Emphasis will be placed on recognising the roles of who might be stakeholders in the 21st century dance industry, for example, audiences, funders, participants, and venues, and the importance of having a personal and professional narrative in communicating ideas and outcomes.
Year 2
Year 2, provides you with the opportunities to apply your skills, knowledge and understanding developed in year 1 to the development of projects. Alongside developing your dance technique you will have the opportunity to develop your teaching skills or gain an insight into producing and managing events completing group projects. You will also learn about theoretical frameworks that will help you develop your understanding of the dance industry today and have the opportunity to specialise in either choreography or Hip Hop and Urban performance practices.
Core modules
Dance Industry 2: teaching and producing pathways
30 credits
This module enables students to build on knowledge and understanding of professional pathways within the dance sector explored through prior learning with a particular focus on working in participatory, for example community dance and dance in education settings, producing production settings. It will provide opportunities for students to specialise through two distinct pathways but both interrelated; working as a teacher in a range of participatory settings, including formal education and community contexts. Or, as a producer working in the arts sector. Both pathways examining the synergies between the two employment opportunities. Emphasis will be placed on how the two employment pathways can support the development of the dance and arts sector and the opportunities to become a local, national and global leader within these contexts. During the first teaching block students will select their chosen pathway of either teaching or producing.
Dance Techniques and Cultures 2
30 credits
This module provides students with the opportunity to further develop their technical and performance skills through engagement with learning, developing, refining and performance of dance techniques from contrasting styles (e.g. Hip Hop and contemporary dance styles). Students will learn through intensive practical classes led by professionals in the field, accompanied by seminars to support their ability to critically reflect on their development. There will be regular opportunities to present their work, experimenting with a variety of communication technologies and reaching multiple audiences.
Dance and the Global Now
30 credits
This module offers students key frameworks and embodied application to develop a comprehensive understanding of dance in an interconnected world, reflecting on the relationship between the local and global dimensions of current movement practices. This includes exploring and critically evaluating the possibilities and formats of dance in a rapidly changing world and engaging with topical issues that relate to historical, social, pollical and cultural contexts, such as the climate crisis, interculturalism, difference, migration and gentrification. The module supports the development of critical, analytical and embodied knowledge of a range of movement-based creative practices through classroom-based and practical workshops. For example, the application of dance to social contexts, site-specific and popular dance performance and the experimentation with urban and hybrid movement vocabularies. It also covers the role of dance in the context of activist and socio-political practices, and of the changing relationships between dance and its audiences through practice-based exploration and application.
Optional modules
Creating Dance 2
30 credits
This module will further develop core compositional techniques encouraging students to develop a more sophisticated and experimental approach to the development of their own choreographic practice with particular emphasis on choreographing on groups of dancers and working in different contexts e.g. site-specific contexts. This module will a explore the work of a range practitioners from diverse range of movement styles and vocabularies from practitioners refining the acquisition of social, political and historical understanding of choreographic contexts. This module encourages students to develop contextual awareness of practitioners, such as Alesandra Seutin to Kate Prince, Botis Seva to Benoit Swan Pouffer, to situate and locate their own practices with.
Hip Hop and Urban Performance Practices 1
30 credits
This module offers students the opportunity to gain valuable practical experience of black dance practices, such as hip hop, afrobeats and dancehall, and to develop skills in articulating the artistic and sociopolitical relevance of these practices. Through a combination of practical and theoretical learning the module lays a foundation for students to develop necessary skills and knowledge to become critically aware, articulate and accomplished practitioners. This includes working in the private commercial and public arts sectors as choreographers, dancers, teachers, producers and researchers.
Optional Year
You have the option to take an additional year to study abroad.
Year 3
The focus of Year 3 is about preparing you for graduation and opportunities to work independently and lead your own projects. You will have the opportunity to undertake a placement or develop your own industry-based project, work as a member of a Dance Company with a choreographer and tailor the rest of your study to your own interests.
Core modules
Dance industry 3: placement and professional skills
30 credits
This module is designed to prepare students for graduation and employment as future leaders within the global dance and arts sector. It enables students to personalise their learning and development through leading a project or undertaking a placement. These opportunities will develop their professional identity they explored through prior learning.
Dance Company
30 credits
This is a practical module designed to take students through the process of making a dance production, from initial conception to final performance whilst also further developing and applying advanced levels of dance techniques and dance training. The focus of the module is to provide students with the experience of being in a dance company and of working closely within professional contexts of training, creating, refining and consolidating final production pieces suitable for professional performance environments. Students will apply ideas and creative problem-solving skills acquired through prior learning, in more diverse performance settings. Students will work in company environments with their choreographer both in scheduled learning time and during independent study hours to create, rehearse and produce full-scale dance-based productions. Students will work in companies led by a module tutor with choreographic experience. The companies will be set be set by timetabled classes.
Optional modules
Independent Dance Project
30 credits
This module is designed to offer students the opportunity to engage with key ideas, questions and approaches in dance scholarship and practice, and to apply them to the development of an independent dance project conducted under supervision. The project can draw from any aspect of learning from across the course and will support students with developing their research, analytical, problem solving, critical thinking and communication skills. The project outputs can consist of applied research and practice, practice-research or textual/written research. Students will be guided to employ and develop knowledge and skills to complete a project on an agreed topic. For example, topics could be related to dance theory, history, performance and choreography, (auto-) ethnography, pedagogy, educational or participatory dance, or industry.
Creating Dance 3
30 credits
This module provides student with the opportunities to experiment, innovate and develop choreographic outputs for context of their choice. It will enable students to further develop artistic leadership skills, communication skills and organisational skills within a collaborative environment to produce a creative output. Moreover, the module enables students to draw on all aspects and disciplines explored throughout prior learning to support students' emerging professional identities as future leaders and dance artists who could work in the dance, participatory, and related arts sectors. It will support students to further develop their choreographic skills and leadership for creating work for specific communities and contexts that have relevance to the wider global world. At the end of the module students will present a performance/creative output such as a live performance, installation or video performance reflecting their aspirations for future choreographic work upon graduation. Students will be offered tutorials at the beginning of teaching block two to support the selection of their chosen pathway. Collaboration with dancers and practitioners in other art forms will be encouraged. To further develop students' professional identities, they will develop a portfolio of their creative work and critical evaluations of the influences on their creative practice.
Hip Hop and Urban Performance Practices 2
30 credits
This module offers students a focused practical and contextual engagement with black dance practices, such as hip hop, afrobeats and dancehall. Students will develop skills in articulating the artistic and sociopolitical relevance of black performance practices through reflective discussion of their own work. The module enables students to refine dance skills and further develop embodied knowledge relevant to this sector. This focus helps in building the attributes required for the students to become articulate entrepreneurs and socially-aware pioneers in the dance industry. This includes working in the private commercial and public arts sectors as choreographers, dancers, teachers, producers and researchers.
