Dance & Choreography

Start your next creative adventure in dance and choreography.

With a focus on creativity and collaboration, you’ll emerge from this course as a technically skilled dancer and an experimental choreographer.

On this Dance & Choreography degree you’ll be given the freedom to develop your own ideas and style, creating your own performances from day one while training in our exceptional, state-of-the-art dance studios under guidance from experienced industry professionals.

You’ll be immersed in an inspirational, creative community, benefiting from Falmouth’s interdisciplinary culture. You’ll be surrounded by other artists in a department buzzing with performers, musicians, filmmakers, theatre designers and more. You're encouraged to be proactive and collaborate with students from a range of disciplines; expanding your skillset, knowledge and sense of creative identity while establishing your own innovative approach to dance and movement, ready for a career in performance, communities or allied professions.

This is a course ideally suited to those who want to build their physical skills and technique as a dancer, alongside developing a distinctive choreographic voice as a curious, independent dance artist.

You will:
Study on one of the only degrees of its kind, placing equal weight on nurturing your individual choreographic voice and developing technical dance skills from day one
You’ll be challenged to imagine new futures for dance by developing projects in collaboration with musicians, illustrators, fashion designers, photographers, filmmakers or game developers as well responding to contemporary issues such as social justice, health, climate change or activism
Build industry links through workshops, guest lectures and visits from internationally renowned practitioners – previous guests have included Company Chameleon, Theo Clinkard, Ayesha Fazal and Honorary Fellow Julie Felix MBE
Benefit from our year-round performance programme, which attracts top dance, theatre and music performers such as Protein Dance, Thick and Tight, Lea Anderson and Aakash Odedra
Learn to utilise our extensive range of technical sound, lighting and recording equipment, to enabling you to realise your own production ideas and visions

Our course structure, teaching and professional-standard facilities provide you with time and space to develop physical, technical and critical capabilities. On this dance degree, you'll receive a thorough grounding in dance techniques and develop your own innovative performance and choreographic practice. There will be collaboration and cross-disciplinary working opportunities and chances to connect with wider communities from the dance industry. This dance and choreography degree will enable you to explore your own interests in dance and prepare you to make creative contributions to a range of professional arts contexts within which dance plays a vital role. We think about dance and choreography 'outside the box’, with opportunities to explore site-specific and digital creation as well as studio-based work. Our students frequently work on projects with other students in our Fashion & Textiles Institute, School of Film & Television and on student-led activities including drawing/painting collaborations. Many students also take part in or lead societies across musical theatre, dance and sport.

Year one
Your first year provides a solid grounding in the skills and techniques used in dance performance and choreography. Modules provide you with a focused, physically-centred experience. In addition to regular body-work classes during which there is a focus on grounding a safe and sustainable dance practice, you are encouraged to explore and challenge your ideas of performance and choreography through studio practice (individual and group work), lectures and seminars. Your bodywork classes include contemporary dance and a range of supporting styles and approaches, such as Pilates, yoga, flow, ballet and, improvisation.

Year one also provides the opportunity to engage with site-based dance in a variety of settings and locations, and to develop strategies for making connections between practice and theory in preparation for year two.

Modules
Contemporary Techniques & Improvisation 1
Performance & Choreographic Practices
Embodied Learning: Theories & Practices
Contemporary Techniques & Improvisation 2
Dance Cultures, Histories & Practices
Site-Based Practices

Year two
Your second year involves directed, supervised and self-generated dance and performance projects. Building on the intensive physical training in your first year, you will continue to develop your technical and skills training through applied techniques, while developing your knowledge and experiences in choreography and performance and its cross-disciplinary contexts.

You will attend to your potential as a change-maker and contributor to the wider field of dance and engaged practices through considerations of your sustainable dance future. You will also develop your writing skills through critical evaluation of social, historical and/or political dance contexts.

Modules
Applied Techniques 1
Performance & Choreographic Skills
Dance Futures
Applied Techniques 2
Researching Dance: Theories & Contexts
Cross-Disciplinary Practices

Year three
In your final year, you'll undertake two major research projects (including practical and written work) both of which focus on your chosen areas of interest. Throughout the year, you'll advance your physical training and creative, choreographic skills. This culminates in a professional practice project, in which you'll collaborate to produce, market, choreograph and perform an original work for public performance – mirroring professional practice.

Modules
Advanced Technique 1
Independent Research Project
Advanced Technique 2
Professional Practice Project

As part of our process of continuous improvement, we routinely review course content to ensure that all our students benefit from a high-quality and rewarding academic experience. There may be some changes made to your course which are not immediately reflected in the content displayed on our website. Any students affected will be informed of any changes made directly.

Assessments for this course are 100% coursework and performance-based, with no exams.

Students are assessed either through class observations, individual submissions, solo or ensemble performances, or written submissions/essays.

When work is being viewed within an ensemble performance, tutors assess your personal demonstration of the skills outlined in the learning outcomes, and you are given an individual mark.