Dance About

ABOUT

Dance

We prepare dance professionals who are strong, innovative, articulate and thoughtful-who are engaged leaders in diverse communities.

From the beginning, the vision of the York University Dance Department has been to produce graduates who make important contributions to the field in all areas, including performance, choreography, teaching, writing, and research. To advance this mandate, the department has regularly revised and expanded its curriculum since opening its doors in September 1970. In that first-year, under the guidance of the founding Chair, Grant Strate, five faculty members welcomed the inaugural class of 32 majors. Not long after, in 1976, the department achieved another milestone when it launched Canada’s first master’s program in dance.

Fast forward to today and the department of Dance also has a PhD and an MFA program. The field of Dance has broadened in the past 50 years to include technological advances that have pushed the field to new innovations in education, creation and dissemination. We have refined our curriculum offerings to respond to the current contemporary climate and to offer a spectrum of study options that will serve our students for the future. Our alumni represent the full range of active dance professionals––creative and performing artists, scholars, educators and administrators––who contribute significantly to diverse cultural scenes locally, nationally and internationally.

The faculty members in York’s Department of Dance are committed to student-centered, experiential learning. Our courses are designed with the diversity of our student population in mind, and students’ multiple ways of learning. We put knowledge into action, providing students with studio, lecture, and seminar experiences that will facilitate deep embodied and intellectual learning. Our mission is to inspire, develop and enhance creative and critical thinking.

Our curriculum is focused on preparing students for a range of dance-related professions and the step-by-step building of the transferable skills they will need to succeed. In addition to studio dance technique which we view as the basis of all our undergraduate degrees, we also train our students in critical thinking and writing. Such skills will provide a strong foundation for whatever career graduates may choose. Above all else, we aim to inspire leadership skills in our students, so they go out into the world prepared to be active innovators in the global field of dance.