MA Dance Practice and Performance

This practice-research based programme will encourage you to approach performance as a critical practice and to relish the complex contextual relationships that exist in making and performing dances. You will explore your role as a collaborator in performance-making as one of agency and empowerment in a supportive environment.

You will be encouraged to develop and test new ideas and skills through your practice-research in order to imagine how they relate to training, practice, performance-making, dance philosophy and dramaturgy. You will be supported by the mentorship and teaching of experienced staff in our modern studios and you will have the opportunity to work with in-house and visiting artists, scholars and a diverse community of peers.

Using a framework of philosophical and aesthetic inquiry, the programme offers a unique perspective to explore the concepts, assumptions and theories which underpin and inform dance practice and discourse. These ideas will be explored further during your encounters with performance, devising dance and learning dance repertory. You will also have access to the full range of optional modules which are offered to all our postgraduate students.

The School is home to the internationally-recognised Centre for Dance Research which gives students rich opportunities to investigate a broad range of cultural, artistic and embodied inquiry. These activities are positioned as critical, scholarly, embodied and creative in order to equip students for original and independent approaches to dance performance.

We are within easy reach of London and its vibrant arts and culture and our campus has superb studios and a well-resourced theatre for dance students. We have excellent links with dance companies and creative organisations which enable us to provide stimulating workplace visits.