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Dance
Main Office: Fine Arts
Phone: 410-455-2179
Email: ntanika1@umbc.edu
Department Website: http://www.umbc.edu/dance/
Department Head: Carol Hess
| Sample Resumés: | Dance |
Introduction
The dance department faculty brings extensive professional experience in various techniques and styles to teaching dance at UMBC. With a primary focus on modern dance and contemporary methods of work, the curriculum gives students opportunities to develop strong technique, composition and performance. By studying the history of dance and related courses, students also gain an understanding of the origins of dance, cultural traditions of dance and the changing world of contemporary dance. The program’s main focus is performance. Students have regular opportunities, both formal and informal, to develop their performance skills. Students generally perform in department concerts at the end of each semester, in dances choreographed by faculty, visiting artists or other dance majors. Students also may have the opportunity to choreograph for department concerts and to create self-designed projects through independent studies. Because dance is studied in an atmosphere with many opportunities for connection with the other arts, students also develop their awareness of potential influences and new possibilities in performance.
The artist-in-residence program brings well-known contemporary choreographers and/or teachers to the UMBC faculty for a full semester each year. This offers students the opportunity to work intensively with established dance artists and to be exposed to different ideas and methods of choreography. The program further develops students’ versatility in different techniques and styles. Recent visiting artists have included Mark Coniglio and Dawn Stoppiello, Tonya Lockyer, David Rousseve, Adrienne Clancy, Mary Williford, Jeanine Durning
and Gesel Mason.