Dance minor CONFUSION!

College Majors Musical Theater Major
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<p>I am looking to get a well-rounded MT education in college. I would like a balanced curriculum. My plan is to get a BFA in MT and minor in dance; but I heared that some schools don't offer a dance minor.WHY is that? If they have a dance major, can't you just take the dance classes since you are the one paying?</p>

<p>Also, say my BFA requires 12 dance credits. Can I take extra dance credits if I want to? And wouldn't that just be concidered a dance minor, even if they don't OFFICIALLY offer a dance minor?</p>

<p>If all else fails, I know that I can take classes from a local studio.</p>

<p>I have many Q's about this, so please bear with me! lol</p>

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<p>I think you are worrying about something you don’t need to worry about. Examine the curriculums of various BFA in MT programs and apply to ones that have adequate dance training. Your question NEVER occurred to my kid when she applied to college for a BFA in MT. She had been dancing her whole life. In the years leading up to college, that was about 13 hours per week. When she attended her BFA program, she had six dance classes per week required every semester (typically two of ballet, two of jazz, two of tap every semester…with some variations such as MT Dance). It was plenty of dance training. There was not time (or desire) for any more than that. Her college program was not unique in this amount of dance that was part of every BFA in MT student’s schedule. Some college MT programs do offer less dance in their MT curriculum (some only offer one or two dance styles per semester) and so find programs that offer enough required dance. If they don’t, inquire if you can add dance electives. You don’t need a dance minor with a BFA in MT really.</p>

<p>PS, I can’t recall if you are an advanced/experience dancer. I think you MIGHT be. I can tell you that there were many advanced and very experienced dancers in my D’s college BFA program and I don’t recall them taking extra dance classes beyond the six classes per week required in the BFA in MT curriculum. The classes were leveled. There honestly wasn’t time to fit in anything more.</p>

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<p>There are schools that offer a strong BFA in Musical Theatre that do not even have a dance major, which would be why they do not have a dance minor. If you are an advanced dancer, most schools will take that into consideration when planning your curriculum and will make sure you get the classes you need, minor or not.</p>

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<p>My plan is to apply to colleges that have adequate dance training, but I want to know that if I do need/want to take some extra dance classes, what my options are. Are you allowed to take extra dance courses than your BFA requires if you want to?</p>

<p>p.s. I am unfortumately not an avid dancer. I took dance when I was quite young, but I can’t remember much since I was so young! When a dance routine is given to me,however, I am able to pick it up quite quickly.</p>

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<p>I am also planning to take lessons in the years ahead to prepare me for college dance.</p>

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<p>While dance is important in MT, keep in mind that in a BFA program, you have a lot of other classes that are required…all the vocal ones, music theory, acting, scene study, voice/speech, theater studies, and liberal arts classes. And then there are rehearsals. When you get out of college and audition, unless you are attending an open dance call, other auditions typically first require singing and sides (acting a part in a scene) and some never require dance or else dance is in the callback phase. So, while dance is important, I can’t see devoting more time to dance than to singing and acting, but rather a balance. Perhaps if your goal is to be a dancer mostly in musicals and attend open dance calls, that may be different. My D never attends open dance calls and so most of her auditions haven’t involved dance, at least not in the first round, if at all. Some musicals also have very little dance. I’m not diminishing the importance of dance training! After all, my kid has been dancing her whole life. She had more training in that than acting when she applied to college by far. It was good in college to work on things she had had less training in such as acting. I don’t know your situation but if you are coming in as a strong dancer and if your BFA program has at least five dance classes per week, that should be enough without a dance minor.</p>

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<p>I cross posted with you. OK, you are not an advanced dancer. For one thing, take dance now during your HS years. Try to take both ballet and jazz at least. </p>

<p>Then, pick college programs that have a BFA curriculum that has what you think involves plenty of dance. If you care about additional dance electives, look into that possibility at each college. The dance minor thing really is not necessary though and may not be possible at many of the schools. Most BFA in MT programs are designed to train you in dance!</p>

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<p>Are you allowed to take extra dance courses than your BFA requires if you want to?</p>

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<p>BwayDreamer, this varies from school to school. That is why I am encouraging you to do two things when you look into a school considering this question/desire that you have. One is to print out the BFA in MT four year curriculum for each program and compare/contrast them as to how much dance is offered in the required BFA curriculum as there are differences like these between programs. If you want a program that has a lot of dance, use that as a criteria for picking such programs with that kind of BFA curriculum. The second thing you can do is to inquire at the programs that do interest you if it is possible to take dance electives on top of the required curriculum. At some schools, this may be possible. But keep in mind that there may not be time in your schedule as a BFA curriculum is FAR more hours than in a regular BA college day of classes. There is no one blanket answer to your question, however, because programs/schools differ. Bring these questions to each program in which you are interested and inquire.</p>

<p>In my daughter’s program at NYU/Tisch/CAP21, there were not dance electives in her studio, but there were already six dance classes required per week in the curriculum. I think there were Tisch-wide dance electives, and maybe those could be added on, but those may have been geared to people who were not enrolled in a performing arts degree program. Also, there is a limit to how many credits can be taken per semester and these are pretty much used up already. Again, there was truly no time anyway. However, I suppose that someone wanting more dance could go to a dance studio in the city on weekends. But most weekends are filled up with production rehearsals. </p>

<p>A BFA curriculum is more set than a BA curriculum and so you have to examine that set curriculum and see if it offers what you want as it varies from BFA program to BFA program. Then, look into if BFA in MT students can add on dance electives. </p>

<p>But again, I think you will find that in many of the BFA programs, there is plenty of dance already built into the curriculum because they are trying to train singers/actors/dancers. So, I think if you pick programs with curriculums that you like, this will become a non-issue for you.</p>

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<p>Another thing…say a BFA program has six dance classes per week in the required curriculum. Why would you need MORE dance? The same argument could be made about adding MORE voice or MORE acting! The BFA curriculum generally provides what you need for your MT training without adding to it . If it doesn’t, don’t apply to that particular program. I can’t see an argument for more dance any more than an argument for more voice. Most BFA programs offer plenty of each. But you can find this out by checking each school’s curriculum and even talking to current students at particular programs. The only reason I can see for adding more dance is if a particular BFA in MT program has too little dance in the first place…OR you are hoping to specialize in dance in your career (but this doesn’t seem to be YOUR case as you haven’t been dancing in recent years and this doesn’t seem to be your main focus).</p>

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<p>Thanks soozievt. I know that all programs are different, but I was under the impression that you can take any courses/classes in college as long as you are paying for it( and you are accepted into the college,of coarse!). Is this not true???</p>

<p>I was mainly referring to programs that do not offer enough dance credits, which I would supplement with extra dance classes even if they didn’t count towards my degree. I guess I could skip this step and only consider programs with strong dance aspects.</p>

<p>As for the credits, I have noticed that many schools have only about 3 dance credit hours per semester. Does this mean that I would only have three hours of dance pre semester? This is an awfully little amount for what I am looking for and would cross many options off my list.</p>

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<p>Yes, this is NOT true. A BFA program has a VERY VERY set curriculum (sort of like an engineering degree) whereby approx. 2/3’s to 3/4’s (varies per school) of your courses are outlined for you that everyone must take in that program where there are NO choices. Then, the remaining 1/3 to 1/4 classes may involve SOME choice but even there, many schools have certain liberal arts requirements to fulfill and some theater studies classes to fulfill. THEN, there is a little bit left over for electives. Also, to be clear, at most schools, there is a maximum number of credits you may enroll in per semester for the tuition. In other words, you can’t decide you want to take 15 classes in a semester. At my daughter’s school, you could take 18 max. credits per semester for the tuition. Many of those credits, due to being in a BFA program were specific requirements and not choices. </p>

<p>If you want more choices in picking your classes, then that is more possible in a BA degree program. Much more flexible and much less requirements. </p>

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<p>I would opt to pick BFA programs whose required BFA curriculum includes the amount of instruction in dance you were hoping to receive (within reason…you need to understand there is a limit to how much dance can be fit into the schedule…not to mention that unless you want to specialize in dance, the program already typically offers adequate dance training, though it does vary between programs and pick ones that balance voice, acting and dance and have the most dance of any of the BFA curriculums you examine). But again, besides the required dance classes for the BFA, you can ASK each specific school if they allow BFA in MT majors to add more dance classes as electives (this is possible at some schools like Elon). At some schools, you will find plenty of dance already in the BFA in MT curriculum as my D did at her college. As far as taking classes that don’t count toward your degree, I am not sure you can fit that into your schedule (a BFA schedule is already very very full time) or if you would be allowed to audit classes (that is taking classes for no credit). </p>

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<p>I don’t feel I can answer this because what “3 credits” means in terms of time in class per week may differ from school to school. This is a question to ask the school or current students or alum or even ask on a specific MT school forum here on CC. Ask how many actual hours per week there is of dance per semester (as opposed to “credits”). But as I have said, SOME BFA programs have LESS dance than others. There are SOME BFA programs where you only take one dance course per semester (maybe it meets twice per week). At my daughter’s BFA program, every semester was three dance courses and each one met twice per week. So, this does vary between programs. Find programs that offer more dance than other programs if you care this much about that factor. </p>

<p>There are no blanket answers to these questions as you have to inquire at each school in terms of what is required and what you may add on as electives (and that is truly possible to fit into one’s BFA schedule which is an intense schedule and NOTHING like a BA schedule). </p>

<p>In the meantime, try to focus on getting dance training NOW as I think you are in early high school still.</p>

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<p>@BwayDreamer: the credit that you receive for a class in college does not necessarily correlate to the classroom hours. For classes such as labs, musical ensembles, dance classes, PE classes, etc. you will generally only receive 1 credit per semester even though you actually attend 2-3 class sessions of 60-90 minutes each. You will have to do investigation into each program in some detail to figure out how much classroom time that you will be spending for each class. Click around on each school’s website enough and you can figure this out - find the course catalog and it should describe how many classroom hours are involved for each course.</p>

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<p>@soozievt - cross posted with your response.</p>

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<p>Right…number of credits doesn’t always correlate with number of hours in class. Back when I went to college, every college course was called one credit at my college and you needed something like 34 to graduate. </p>

<p>When my D went to NYU/Tisch, studio was called 8 credits but studio (all the training classes) amounted to three days per week from 9 AM to 6 PM! I also recall my D taking an elective that only had two credits allotted to it but it met the same amount of time as her 4 credit courses in terms of hours.</p>

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<p>BwayDreamer, I have to applaud you for looking into colleges so thoroughly. I wish some other kids I know who don’t do that (and are even rising seniors) would do as you are doing. However, I have to say that you are getting kind of bogged down in details of each program when you are only going into 10th grade. It is good to be exploring college options but it is still early and a lot of your focus should be on exploring the training options for the next three years of high school and what things you will undertake and so on. Explore college degree options but at this juncture, the level of detail in dance credits and so on is almost too much for someone in your grade. It is never too early to explore colleges but I think you are worrying about details in various posts (not just this thread) that are almost too soon to be dealing with (such as you brought up networking after college graduation too in another thread). Try to do some college visits if you can in the next two years and you may get a sense of what appeals to you. Then narrow it down by these kinds of in depth inquiries about credit hours and so on when you are up to narrowing your college list. It is too soon to narrow the college list in my view right after freshman year in HS. My own kid did not do that and she went to college after junior year of HS.</p>

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<p>BwayDreamer…you mentioned taking dance in the years ahead to get ready for college – GOOD!!! How many years until you graduate? Do you still have some summers left for training? That can be an excellent time to hone your skills, whether at a musical theatre summer program, a dance intensive, or the excellent dance studio in your neighborhood. </p>

<p>You seem concerned about the number of hours you can take dance classes. True, more quality time in the studio is important (voice/piano takes a lot of practice on your own time, as does reading of plays…but you can’t learn to dance without the guidance of a teacher), but dance is only one component of a musical theatre degree/program.</p>

<p>Schools with strong dance components were also important as my daughter made her list, and she will be taking fewer actual hours in a dance studio this fall than she has for years (she is usually in a dance studio a minimum of 3 hours, 6 nights a week). She did talk to the director of the program, and she will be able to audit more dance classes if her schedule allows…but she’s not too worried. Her fall schedule is full of movement – movement for actors, an MT “workout” class, and she’s considering joining the Swing Dance club… There is also the possibility of a dance minor, if she decides she wants to add it…but that’s up to her.</p>

<p>Now…about the difference in “taking a lot of credits in dance” and “a dance minor” – in order for my kiddo to have a dance minor, there is a list and sequence of courses she would have to take. Dance minors have to be (at her school, anyway, and I’d imagine at most) at an advanced level and must audition for entry into the minor. In addition, she could pursue being in the university’s dance company, which is additional hours of rehearsals and performances…a very cool thing…but not sure how it will fit with her MT requirements…a lot of this she plans to figure out as she goes along. Currently, her fall semester is full, so any classes she took would be audited (could attend, but not receive credit…so that wouldn’t work toward a minor…). </p>

<p>Some schools do have a dance major, but it is very separate from MT – that’s a good question for you to find out as you do your research – just because a school offers a dance major does NOT mean you’d be allowed to take classes with the dance major folks, even if you were at that high of a level. Also, college isn’t flat rate – you mentioned “can’t you just take the dance classes, if you are the one paying?” If this puts your schedule into overload, there is often a per-credit hour fee of several hundred dollars per credit hour – something to think about as you are creating a college schedule once you’re admitted. And you need some down time for homework for those academic classes as well as practice on voice, etc – a class may meet only twice a week…but you are spending a lot of time out of class doing homework, etc).</p>

<p>Finally, think about what sort of a performer you are, what your goals are for training, where you see yourself performing. Do you see yourself a dancer-singer-actor? Actor-singer-dancer? Any of the other zillions of permutations? To do this crazy thing, you’ve got to have skills in all areas, but everyone has that one area that they are stronger in, or that defines them. And that can change over time – my “reformed ballerina” had originally pictured dance as her biggest strength…now she is enjoying the growth she’s had in voice over some years with an excellent teacher. As you think about your strengths and goals, use that as you research schools – if you’re very much a dancer on stage, look at schools like Pace in New York, which has an MT major, but is also debuting a major in Commercial Dance this year. (My daughter was accepted to commercial dance, but learned that she would not be allowed to take voice lessons on campus – see – it goes both ways! – so chose another school.) Look at Point Park in Pittsburgh – lots of dance hours there…but study the BA/BFA concept there. </p>

<p>It is good that you’re researching and trying to figure out what you need (both from a training aspect and as you start to narrow down your list for auditions). Keep reading, start taking dance classes (if you aren’t already) and enjoy the adventure!</p>

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<p>^Cross-posting with some above…sorry for any repetition of concepts!</p>

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<p>Just to give a further example froma different school in terms of dance. D is at Point Park whcih does have a dance minor for MT students, but you must audition to be accepted to the minor, so the assumption is you would be an advanced intermediate to advanced dancer. However, all MT students at PPU take considerable amounts of dance, including 8 am ballet daily for the entire freshman year. THis si a 90 minute class, 5 days a week and is taken for only 3 credits, so for 3 credits you are doing significantly more than 3 hours of dance a week.</p>

<p>As you are looking at schools and dance curriculum, it is important to also look at how many sections of a particular style of dance are offered each quarter. PPU has 8 section of freshman ballet (this covers MT and Dance majors). Multiple sections means that classes are likely to have more levels so dancers are grouped by how advanced they are. DD decided not at attend a school she loved and had a dance minor but only had three levels of ballet and she would have been in the top level as a freshman, which makes growth more difficult.</p>

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<p>thank you all for helping me understand how the credits work! I know this sounds dumb, but I actually thought that 3 credit hours per semester meant 3 hours of classes for the WHOLE semester, not per week! No wonder I was confused!</p>

<p>I’m exploring myself and learning what I want in terms of an MT program; I am not at this point narrowing my college list, just what I want in a college. Of coarse, that does take some colleges out of the picture. I am keeping my options open, as I know that my interests could change over the years. I just would like to have a BASIC plan that will continue to be flexible. This plan includes what I need to do at THIS point in my life to be ready for a good college a few years down the road. I totally agree that it is too early now to narrow my college list. Mabe just trim some of the fat off!</p>

<p>@ mammafrog, good points make above^!! Especially the difference between “Taking a lot of credits in dance” and “a dance minor.” :)</p>

<p>oh, and @ keepingcalm, helpful imput!</p>