Dance Minor Requirements

Dance is a practice of crafting pathways for curiosity, resiliency, and connection through movement. Our dance minor at Lawrence values every body, practice as research, and kinetic intelligence. Collaborative process is the foundation of our study and the minor is comprised of artistic, academic, and athletic practices. Our innovative approach to movement nourishes students ready to take embodied, inter-disciplinary, experimental approach to artmaking and supports dance artist scholars on their journey towards choreographing compassionate futures.

The Dance minor is open to all Lawrence students and offers movement practices that are accessible to all. In the classroom/studio, we value difference, create a sense of belonging, and develop an embodied practice of place, both internal and external. To minor in dance, students take three to four of the Foundational Dance courses, supplemented by courses in the Embodied, Collaborative, and Practice categories. Foundational courses cultivate movement longevity, spatial composition, critical thinking, and artistic life skills. The additional curriculum encourages interdisciplinary investigation alongside mental and physical flexibility, stamina, health, and agency.

Through deep and embodied processes of movement research, collaboration, and creation, dance artist scholars will leave their undergraduate career with tools for creating their own lives, experience with presence and performance, and the capacity to thrive, wherever they move next.

The minor in Dance requires a total of 36 units.

15 units from among the following Foundational courses:

• THAR/MUDA 132: Ensemble Thinking (3 units)
• THAR/MUDA 143: Fundamentals of Movement: Practices of Care for the Performing Artist, Athlete (3 units)
• THAR/MUDA 221: Dance Studies: Global Perspectives (6 units)
• THAR/MUDA 341: Construction Sites: Tools for Embodied Research (6 units)

6 units from among the following Embodied courses:

• THAR/MUDA 134: Contact Improvisation (3 units, repeatable)
• UNIC 135: Doing Nothing (1 unit)
• MURP 120: Deep Listening Lab (3 units)
• RLST 356: Meditation: Psychological and Buddhist Perspectives (6 units)
• THAR/MUSI 310: Alexander Technique I (3 units)
• THAR 430/MUSI 410/MURP 430: Alexander Technique II: For Performers (3 or 6 units)

6 units from among the following Collaborative courses:

• THAR/MUDA 132: Ensemble Thinking (3 units)
• MUEN 205: Dance Collective Ensemble (1 unit, repeatable)
• THAR 355 or 357: Theatre Production Laboratory (1 unit, repeatable)
• THAR 135: Stagecraft (6 units)
• THAR 137: Costume Crafts and Technology (6 units)
• MUSI/BUEN 150: Introduction to Arts Management (6 units)
• THAR161: Stage Makeup (3 units)
• MUSI 120: Basic Audio Recording (1 unit)
• MUSI 220: Audio Editing and Mixing Tech (3 units)
• MUEN 231: Kinkaviwo (1 unit)
• MUEN 232: Tambo Toke (1 unit)
• MUEN 203: Balinese Gamelan (1 unit)

9 units from among Practice courses:

• THAR/MUDA 134: Contact Improvisation (3 units, repeatable)
• THAR/MUDA 136: Embodied Creative Practice (3 units)
• THAR/MUDA 138: Articulating the Solo Body (3 units)
• THAR/MUDA 143: Fundamentals of Movement: Practices of Care for the Performing Artist, Athlete (3 units)
• THAR/MUDA 147: Physical Practice: Modern Dance (3 units)
• THAR/MUDA 149: Physical Practice: Broadway Styles (3 units)
• THAR/MUDA 185: Movement and Text (6 units)
• THAR/MUDA 220: Musicians in Movement (3 units)