Dance

Dance students will develop creative skills and innovative teaching methods for dance in community settings, schools and professional contexts, informed by understandings of wellbeing and lifelong learning through the arts.

Learning dance offers the opportunity for focused practical engagement in contemporary movement practices, choreography and improvisation. It incorporates diverse approaches to understanding dance through ethnography, cultural studies, phenomenology and creative practice as research. The work and ideas of contemporary practitioners in New Zealand and in other cultures provides a context for specific discussions, to which students bring their own dance knowledge. Dance papers have public performances as final assessments and the learning process is embodied through practical classes and workshops, rehearsals and performances.

Dance is taught within the Theatre Studies and Dance programme. The staff are highly qualified and contain a broad spectrum of professional, artistic practice. Their research interests include performance-as-research, contemporary performance theory, directing, choreographing, site dance, digital dance, somatic practices and movement for wellbeing.

Dance classes, seminars and rehearsals take place in the purpose-built Dance Studio, with performances also in the The Playhouse Theatre in the Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts.