Dance for non-majors

College Search & Selection
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I’ve posted threads that ask this question deep into the discussion but I wanted to try to get some good info all in one place. D21 and I are trying to get as much information as possible about where she can take ballet and contemporary class and get the chance to perform as an extra curricular activity and not be a dance major or minor. I feel like it’s almost impossible to figure this out on schools’ websites. One can see (a) info about the major or minor and sometimes (b) info about a dance team which is more like poms where the ladies dance at sporting events.

U Richmond seems to be the only school we can find that has a robust dance company that does not require the kids to be majors. I know a lot of schools have options for non-majors but D is a highly trained dancer and we’ve looked at videos and some of these groups are really bad. She can easily hang with the dance majors almost anywhere. She has friends from her studio who are ballet majors at IU and Oklahoma and Butler as well as friends who dance at Fordham. I believe she could get into any of these programs but she’s not wanting to major in dance so…the trick is to find a place where she can get into class and perform with the good dancers without having to major.

We’re also unclear on how dance class works on college campuses. When we look at the info on dance majors, there are required classes of course. But i would expect that there are also daily ballet classes and maybe weekly contemporary classes and maybe those are above and beyond the academic load? D is looking to take all of her classes in academic subjects and dance class above that. Is this not a thing anywhere?

Looking at mid to small sized schools. I’ve posted about her search on another thread that I intend to keep updating but, just to start the discussion here, her current list includes Colgate, Richmond, Wake, Elon, Davidson, Denison, Bates, Boston College but we are open to all ideas. Some on this list don’t really have the dance she’s hoping for. Budget not an issue. Strong student but not T20 schools strong. We’d like some ideas but also just want info on whether it’s even a thing out there to dance extracurricularly on the side with strong dancers and not major.

Sorry so long!

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Most schools have a dance company (normally as a club) for students of all majors. Check out the club listings at each school. She also might be able to take dance classes as electives to satisfy her degree requirements. Call up the schools and ask if they allow dance classes for non-majors. Some schools also have master classes for anyone who signs up. If you can’t find any of these, she might be interested in a local private dance school.

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@izrk02 thanks. We will look up the clubs. The ones we’ve seen so far, though, are pretty bad. She’d like to be with kids who have a lot of dance experience. I think she’s just hoping to find her “people” this way because dancers are a certain breed you know. Lol. I’m just afraid those kids are all dance majors at most places.

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It’s okay, I’m sort of in the same boat. I tap and I don’t really want to take intro tap classes in college but I still want to continue, but most of the colleges I’m looking at only have intro classes for non-majors/minors. Elon and some of the others might be different since they have good dance programs.

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Bucknell? I don’t know if the person I know there is a dance major, but she is a wonderful dancer and is dancing there.

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Barnard is worth a look if she’s open to women’s colleges. A relevant post:

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In terms of structure, your daughter probably should primarily consider colleges with a dance department distinct from that of theatre (as an indicator of depth in dance-specific opportunities).

In principle, your daughter essentially could create dance as her primary EC through the curriculum. That is, at colleges that allow students to take classes beyond the standard load, your daughter could pursue full or partial credit courses in areas such as advanced ballet and performance.

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So having been through this with my daughter, I think by far the biggest thing she needs to think about is whether she really wants to continue ballet specifically at a high level. High level ballet is not as easy to find as other dance forms and high level ballet that is not part of a BFA is even harder. My daughter ultimately had to be flexible on some schools by factoring in proximity to city options. We found very few pure extra curriculars that offered robust enough ballet to continue pointe. Some schools she considered, keeping in mind she was more STEM research focused than I believe you daughter is:

Duke - this is where she will be attending. She took one of their advanced ballet classes during a visit and loved it enough to ED there.

Barnard/Columbia - one of the best other options for robust academics and extremely flexible and strong dance, but really didn’t like the Columbia core and didn’t want a women’s college.

University of Southern California - while the BFA classes aren’t open to non-majors their dance program is robust enough that other classes were plenty strong.

Johns Hopkins - this was a strong contender for her ED with their Peabody dance offerings, but their ballet strength seemed very mixed and she didn’t love the disconnected campus and frankly preferred Duke

Washington U - very strong ballet, she liked this program quite a bit.

Rice - this is one that shows how she had to be flexible as she really liked a lot about Rice, but their dance offerings are extremely limited. She actually took a Houston Ballet drop in class while there to understand whether it would work and loved the class. It’s relatively easy to get there from campus and while performance opportunities wouldn’t be available, strong ballet classes would be possible.

Case Western - they have more of a contemporary focus for performance, but ballet is offered.

University of South Carolina - my daughter loved their Balanchine focus and knew one of the instructors from a summer intensive and thought very highly of her.

Tulane - she considered this one highly for a while as they have a lot of interesting degree options (a guaranteed med school admission if you major in the humanities) it’s also more contemporary focused than she was looking for, but does have ballet.

Others she considered but didn’t work for her as she wanted a research university, but may work for your daughter: Vassar, Mt. Holyoke, and Smith seemed to come up quite a bit. There are some additional big public school options, but I’m not sure that’s what you’re looking for: ASU, U of Arizona, University of Kansas, University of Washington, University of Michigan, University of Iowa all have robust dance programs.

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I don’t think Vassar is on her list but take a look at this. It seems to describe what you’re looking for with regard to dance (but I’m not knowledgeable about this area). It’s a non-major elective but there are many talented dancers at Vassar. I’m also attaching a video of their repertory dance company.

https://dance.vassar.edu/about/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5lnwAKa02Y

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@Darcy123: Do you consider advanced ballet such as described at the University of Richmond (and which some colleges allow to be repeated for credit) to be equivalent to high ballet in most cases, or would this vary substantially by college in your experience, irrespective of the course description?

https://theatredance.richmond.edu/major-minor/dance.html

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I think it varies tremendously by college from what we’ve seen. I didn’t include University of Richmond even though my daughter did apply EA as the OP seemed to have researched it thoroughly and we did not visit in person. For my daughter, who wants to continue pointe - reviewing the pointe/variation offerings was the easiest way to determine if advanced ballet was really advanced. If they had little to no pointe work or variations, the ballet was typically more foundational to support the contemporary program than the type of ballet my daughter was looking for.

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Sacred heart has a school dance company that functions like a higher level private dance school. There is no dance major or minor, but the training is included in the tuition. They have a contemporary, hip hop, and Irish dance division, I believe. They’re nowhere near the level of school that has been otherwise discussed on this thread, though. My daughter is at haverford, and the dance classes at Bryn Mawr are all open to non-majors, as are the audition based performance ensembles. They do not offer pointe though. Ballet at a level that includes pointe work seems mostly relegated to BFA programs.

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Miami University has a Dance Company. Great school for undergraduate education and a beautiful campus. They have a Dance minor but that is not part of the Company. The Company is by audition only.

http://www.units.miamioh.edu/dancetheatre/index.html

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We are in the midst of investigating this as well, for D23, stem-type kiddo who is highly academic, IF she chooses college and does not get sucked into the lure of company auditions later on. Sigh.
From what I have found, a lot can be learned from going in depth on websites focusing on course catalogs, looking for pointe levels, options for variations, frequency of ballet, as well as reading about any Ballet “clubs”(Princeton university ballet, Columbia ballet collaborative, etc) and delving into those websites and videos. Some of these sites will mention where the "company " takes extra classes off campus etc. So far, it seems that Columbia/Barnard, Harvard (and MIT as they can join Harvard Ballet company), Princeton, Smith, Duke, and Vassar are all on our list as fitting the non-dance major but wants almost daily ballet even if some has to be nearby campus.

I love other people’s new ideas for programs I did not know were potentially a fit!

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Perhaps a safety option for your D would be Muhlenberg. Strong dance program and performance opportunities that I believe are open to non majors/minors.

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Oh! Forgot to add UChicago–has a ballet performance company that does more “classic” ballet than some others, and has class options on and off campus.

(and btw I absolutely know that all on my list are reach-y for anyone. We’ll do matches and safeties later on in the process, as my dancer is '23)

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Hofstra, Loyola University (in Chicago) have a dance B.A. so a double major may be feasible. B.F.A. sucks up the entire undergrad and it’s hard to study anything else other than a minor.
Agree with the above recommendations - my daughter who is a dance major at VCU attended a performance at the neighboring school U of Richmond and felt it is stronger for ballet performance and it allows for a non-major to be involved. Also mentioned above is U of South Carolina - excellent ballet and she could be a non-major or minor and the cost of attendance for a good student is lower especially with scholarship/Honors College.

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I have a highly trained ballet dancer (‘23), also a high stats student, strong in STEM and the arts. She doesn’t want to major or minor in dance but wants to keep dancing. We have a good reach list but also looking for target and safeties. Have you found some good options?

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We are finding the targets and safeties harder. So far that non-reach part of our list includes Wake, Vassar, W&L, Uof R, WashU . The amount of pointe seems to vary and it is hard to predict what the options will be as many seem to be just getting back to a full load of classes post-pandemic. The posts on this thread have a lot of other ideas in the target /safety range so I suggest making a list and then going through school by school!
What is a target/safety vs a reach obviously depends on the student—the GC helped D sort her preliminary list recently so we are using their distinctions (they were spot on with D21 so we trust their assessment)—-I imagine that could be hard to figure out if you do not have good college counseling at the high school.

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University of Iowa and University of South Carolina were my daughter’s safeties. University of Iowa had rolling admission (not sure if they still do) so was admitted over the summer with a very simple application. You do have to audition for the dance minor though, so depending on their level, it could be an academic safety but not a dance.

Both offered large merit awards - she was in the running for University of South Carolina’s Top Scholars program, but withdrew her application when she was accepted to her ED school.

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