PERFORMANCE AT DENISON
Dance students perform in the Knapp Performance Lab
Dance performance opportunities are plentiful at Denison. Annual performances include a fall and spring concert featuring choreography by guest artists and faculty, Vail Guest-Artist-in-Residence performances, and junior and senior student research concerts. We have several performance venue including our upper studio, which converts into a Studio Theatre with professional lighting and sound systems and risers, seating over 100; the new Knapp Performance Lab, fully equipped with lighting, sound and digital technology; and on occasion we are able to use the Theater Department’s main stage proscenium theater, Ace Morgan. Our major productions run three or four performances (usually Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evening) and usually occur the second to the last weekend in the regular academic calendar excluding exam week.
In addition, many Dance Studies courses include performance as part of the required work for the course. Some recent examples are: Cultural Studies – Modernism Recomposed, Compositional Studies – Music, Movement, Interaction, and Movement Analysis – Laban Movement Analysis. Students hoping to choreograph for their senior research project will likely take a minimum of two Compositional Studies courses and Seminar in Dance Production. Students wanting to reconstruct historical work must complete two or more courses in Movement Analysis.
At the end of each semester all technique students come together to present their work to their fellow students and faculty in an informal, lively and entertaining Open Showing.
View the side tab showing our calendar and guest artists for the current year.
Yes! Interested students should come to the audition at the beginning of each semester. Auditions for our 2010 spring concert will be held on January 27 at 6:45 pm in the Doane Dance Building. The spring concert dates are April 22 - 24, 2010.
After auditions, the choreographers select their cast and the company of approximately 20 to 30 students is formed for the department concert. Other auditions for student-led performances are held separately.
First-year students are encouraged to audition and are welcomed to perform. Upper-class-persons and dance majors and minors may be cast in as many pieces as they can find time, but first-year students may only appear in one dance in each concert (allowing for more study time). We usually have four to six dance works in our department concert. The cast for each piece ranges from duets and trios to 14 or 15 students.
No, you don’t. This is a liberal arts school and you are welcome to participate in our classes and in our audition process without committing yourself to majoring or minoring. Although in auditions, preference is given first to majors and minors, next to seniors and then to students enrolled in department coursework.
However, this might be a good place to tell you a little about majoring or minoring. The dance major consists of three Dance Studies courses (12 credits), six Movement Practices courses, these include technique and performance (12 credits) and 12 credits of Advanced studies, which includes a year-long senior research project that could be either theoretical or choreographic in nature. Many students double major, coupling dance with math, psychology, English, communications, environmental studies, etc. The minor is quite manageable around other interests.