Dance

At Salve Regina University, our bachelor's degree in dance offers a transformative education through the study of dance in a liberal arts environment. Community is at the heart of our dance program, with an environment that encourages and supports individuality, personal creativity, dynamic exchanges of energy, risk-taking and resilience.

Nurture Your Strengths and Interests at Salve Regina

Our students work closely with faculty to design an educational experience relative to their own strengths and interests. Across the curriculum, students engage in critical dialogue, physical practice and creative production as they study dance history, theory, technique, performance, composition and pedagogy. Courses highlight the intersectional nature of dance to inspire connections across disciplines, allowing each student to carve out an individualized career pathway for future success.

Training across a range of dance styles allows our students to become versatile dancers, developing artistic voices informed by course work in contemporary, ballet, tap, hip hop, social dance, commercial dance and more. With our unique focus on jazz studies, we acknowledge and honor jazz as a historically Black American art form that has influenced the continuum of American dance and culture today. Students embody jazz from a rooted perspective, learn the history and work with jazz musicians in studio classes and performance.

In alignment with the mission of Salve Regina, we strive to offer an education that is inclusive, culturally relevant and antiracist. Our students develop into empathetic, self-aware artists empowered to impact their communities in ways that promote equity and justice.

Discover Endless Opportunities

We value community as a core value within the dance program. Everyone comes into the program with their own personal style, their own background. Instead of trying to make a space for the dancers who are like each other, we encourage them to be themselves.

Our students have endless opportunities as performers and as student choreographers, and they are immersed in working with guest artists from across the field. Our students are taking master classes all the time, they’re engaged in rehearsal processes and they are performing quite frequently.

Lindsay Guarino, professor and chair, Department of Music, Theatre and Dance

Develop Your Artistic Voice

Salve Regina’s dance program provides students with individualized attention and a wide range of training and performance experiences. Our liberal arts education, in combination with a curriculum based in the performing arts, helps students realize their artistic potential while acquiring skills that lead to lifelong learning.

Through the discipline of performance, students explore concepts like teamwork, problem solving, community participation, active listening and the synergy that comes from working together to create a single end product. This process leads to improvement of self-image, presentation and development of human potential.

Our Faculty

Salve's dance faculty members are performers, choreographers, scholars and – most importantly – educators. Our goal is to create an environment where you can dream, take risks and explore your creative potential.

Lindsay Guarino, professor and chair, Department of Music, Theatre and Dance

Meet Our Faculty

Study Abroad

Our students can take advantage of Salve Regina's 200+ semester, yearlong and short-term study abroad programs in 45 countries, including "Jazz Dance in Calgary" at Decidedly Jazz Danceworks in Calgary, Alberta each year during spring break.

This intensive experience for dance majors and minors includes training with expert teachers in state-of-the-art facilities; West African, Afro-Cuban and jazz classes with live music accompaniment; and the opportunity to learn the business of how a professional company, training program and community education program function within a nonprofit organization. Students also experience the arts and culture of downtown Calgary, as well as a day trip to Banff National Park to explore the glacial lakes and Canadian Rocky Mountains.

Life After Salve

Salve Regina's dance program not only fuels students' passion with formal training, including unique performance opportunities and structured exposure to many facets of the art form, it also develops a well-rounded graduate prepared to excel in today's demanding workforce.

Students are encouraged to double major or add a minor that complements their career goals. Courses such as Careers in Dance, Teaching Methods in Dance and Dance Performance provide students with concrete skills for employment.

Career paths include:

Performance
Choreography
Dance educator (studios, K-12, higher education, community organizations)
Business owner (private sector, nonprofit)
Arts administrator (marketing, communication, company management, dance school management, development, social media coordinator)
Producer/stage manager/theater manager/designer
Dance therapy
Arts advocacy
Dance writing/publishing/journalism
Physical therapy
Event planning
Public relationship and marketing

Academic Catalog

Academic Calendar

Schedule of Classes

Major in Dance (B.A.)

38 credits

Required courses:

DNC100: Dance in Society: Aesthetics and Cultural Contexts
DNC210: Roots of Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and the American Experience
DNC231: Rhythm-Generated Jazz Styles and Techniques
DNC301: Dancing Histories
DNC310: Arts for Social Action
DNC331: Contemporary Jazz Styles and Techniques
DNC400: Choreography
DNC401: Dance Composition
DNC490: Jazz and Justice Capstone

Students take a minimum of 15 credits across at least three different dance styles, chosen from the following:

DNC080: Advanced Contemporary Workshop
DNC120: Contemporary Dance
DNC122: Ballet I
DNC123: Tap Dance
DNC124: Dance for Musical Theatre
DNC125: Hip-Hop Dance
DNC126: Conditioning for Dancers
DNC127: Social Dance
DNC131: Theatrical Jazz Styles and Techniques
DNC220: Contemporary Dance II
DNC222: Ballet II
DNC230: West African Dance
DNC231: Rhythm-Generated Jazz Styles and Techniques
DNC321: Contemporary Jazz Styles and Techniques
DNC370: Dance Performance
DNC399: Special Topics

Students also complete six credits of interdisciplinary coursework, chosen from a list of offerings in American studies, biology, communications, history, management, sociology and anthropology, theatre arts and women, gender and sexuality studies.