My DD is a junior in high school and we are beginning to compile a list of colleges for dance. She takes a ton of ballet and has strong technique, but is not on pointe (did not continue after her first year). Do programs like the University of Arizona require dancers to be on pointe, or does it put them at a great disadvantage not to? Other strong schools?
Is this to be a dance major ?
My DD has been on pointe for years in a pre-professional program. She has only
danced classical ballet and because of that, she hasn’t considered a dance major.
Auditions I believe require a lot of forms of dance.
If your daughter has strong technique she should just progress to pointe.
The building of technique is what makes the dancer strong for pointe.
It’s just one form and with her strength, it shouldn’t take long to master.
My D21 applied and was accepted to University of Arizona and has barely done pointe. She did not include any pointe in her audition video and they did not ask for it. It was not asked for at any of the 12 schools that she applied to.
Thank you for your reply, very relieved to hear! Has your D decided where she’s going?
Not yet… we are still waiting to hear back from several schools and she still has one more virtual/zoom audition to do. She probably won’t be able to decide until the end of March. Good luck to you and your daughter. There are a lot of great schools out there. It just depends on what her focus wants to be. Ballet? Contemporary/Modern? A mix of ballet/modern/jazz? I can help a little bit, at least with the schools that we have researched, but I know there are lots more great school out there.
Any insight would be great! She wants to focus in Contemporary/modern/jazz, with of course all the ballet that supports it. She also wants a big university, not a conservatory, so that rules out a number of options (albeit good ones!), because she wants the option to double major. So as we start this list and get ready to research, without the benefit of campus visits, we’re looking at a lot of state schools - U of Arizona, USC, Indiana U, U of Michigan, Florida State.
My daughter applied to programs that emphasize modern (rather than ballet), brought her pointe shoes along to every audition, and was never asked to put them on. One school (Adelphi) gave her the option of doing some pointe but she didn’t end up doing it. Unless she is wanting to focus on classical ballet (which it sounds like she is not), I cannot imagine any school requiring pointe for her audition or having required pointe classes. My daughter’s (large, modern-focused) program has a pointe class that only occasionally gets enough students to run, from what I understand.