Bachelor of Arts in Dance Performance and Choreography

Program Director:

Dr. Robert Tanner (Professor)

Faculty: A list of faculty is available in the Spelman College Bulletin

Program overview:

Made possible through a partnership between Morehouse College and Spelman College, Dance Performance and Choreography at Spelman is a critical and creative thinking laboratory that nurtures students of the African diaspora. Students investigate intersections of experimental creative practices, cultural discourse, and technology.
In keeping with the college’s focus on social justice and innovation, the department’s theory and composition classes fuse technology and womanist theory along with other social discourse. The curriculum centers on the choreographic process through the lens of Black feminist theories, contemporary dance techniques, and interdisciplinary collaborative practice. Students engage with an exciting roster of visiting artists who explore and push boundaries through the Spelman College Dance Artist Incubation Residency. Department faculty include globally recognized working artists who mentor and guide students through scholarship, artistic production, and entrepreneurial strategies. The department cultivates freethinkers and intelligent movers interested in becoming creators, innovators, writers, historians, and scholars within the evolving field of dance.

Student learning outcomes:

After completing the major, students will be able to:

• Engage in dance as a mode of inquiry, knowledge production, and critical thinking through embodied creative process, theoretical research, literature, and performance.
• Articulate verbally and through embodied practice historical and contemporary socio- cultural contexts of dance practice.
• Demonstrate high-level choreographic skills to investigate, engage in, and develop creative processes.
• Demonstrate the ability to self-generate professional opportunities and creative spaces, and maneuver within various concert, commercial, and social communities locally, regionally, and internationally.

Department policies and/or General Education modifications:

• A minimum grade of C is required for all Dance Performance and Choreography courses that apply towards the major or minor.