威斯康星大学密尔沃基分校

Our program is structured to meet the scheduling constraints of professional working performers, choreographers, and educators. A balance of on-campus and distance learning coursework is available during the fall and spring semesters, in addition to the intensive summer graduate course offerings.

Our program consists of 60 credits with an emphasis on contemporary choreography and performance, focusing on the candidate’s individual creative research. Our curriculum is dedicated to guide students to explore, create, and share knowledge that highlights embodied scholarship and community engagement. Underpinning our MFA program is the belief that individual creative praxis relies on a reciprocity between critical dance studies and choreographic research. Through intensive in person learning and self-directed research, artists connect their traditions to emergent forms and new communities, bringing social and racial justice into focus through their practice. In depth choreographic practice, research, and dance scholarship provide the framework for artists to situate their research within a global perspective.

Graduate students engage in choreographic research through physical and theoretical inquiry while critically examining their technical movement practice through a variety of somatic and theoretical perspectives. Our MFA program supports student inquiry providing facilities and customized opportunities to investigate and perform their work nationwide. Through faculty mentorship and rigorous personal investigations, students are guided to integrate their knowledge produced through creative and scholarly investigation into a final thesis project.

Program Goals

The MFA in Dance prepares graduates to adapt to and thrive in an ever-changing field, where social, economic, and technological factors influence the modes in which artists create, present and frame their artistic work. Our program balances theoretical, technical, creative, and practical work to equip graduates with critical skills required for advancement in the field. The curriculum ensures that graduates are prepared to leverage their knowledge through scholarship and embodied research to be citizen artists, community leaders and cultural ambassadors in the private and nonprofit sectors as well as secure gainful employment in K-12 and higher education.