When Genevieve Waldorf was a senior in high school, she felt conflicted about what to do next. “You’re on this cusp of deciding your future,” remembers the Pacific Northwest Ballet corps dancer. “I knew I wanted to go to college—it was really important for me to receive higher education and earn a degree. But I also wanted to pursue a career in professional dance.” Rather than choose just one path, Waldorf made the then-unconventional decision not to decide.

Between balancing dance classes with academic requirements and rehearsal schedules with studying, college dance students have plenty on their minds. What shouldn’t be added to that list? Whether the studio floors they’re spending their days on will cause injury or discomfort. Thanks to Harlequin Floors, students and professors at a growing number of colleges know […]

Whether AMDA students are attending school at its Los Angeles campus or its New York campus, they are immersed in each city’s performing arts industry from day one. The Los Angeles campus, based in Hollywood, sits directly across from the historic Capitol Records Building, while the New York City campus, located on Manhattan’s Upper West […]

DTCB, part of the Brooklyn-based dance education organization Dancewave, is designed to make the labor-intensive, challenging process of applying to college dance programs as accessible as possible to a wide range of students. The program reduces some of the obstacles that make the college admissions process so stressful—and costly—for high schoolers and their families by directly connecting students with a number of college dance programs. For Mason, preparing to start as a freshman at Chapman University this fall, Dancewave helped to make the application process more personal. “My daughter didn’t get lost there,” says Sumpter of DTCB. “She felt seen.”

Last Friday, The University of the Arts in Philadelphia announced it would be shutting down as of June 7, shocking dance students and faculty.

Bachelor of fine arts dance programs, whether housed in a conservatory or larger university setting, tend to give out letter grades like any other academic degree. But rather than exams and essays, the studio classes that make up the bulk of BFA programs are evaluating students on less tangible benchmarks like artistry, technique, and performance. How much weight are BFA programs really putting on grading—and how much do students’ grades matter during, and after, their time in college?

When the nation’s top college dance teams gathered at the Universal Dance Association Nationals in Orlando earlier this year, few could have predicted the millions who would be soon watching worldwide. The annual competition, in which college dance teams perform across a number of divisions in jazz, hip-hop, and pom categories, attracted a massive audience […]

Ana María Alvarez didn’t always imagine herself ending up back on campus. “I’ve had a love–hate relationship with the academy,” says Alvarez, the founder of CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater who joined the University of California San Diego’s Theatre and Dance Department as a tenured faculty member in late 2022.