University of Illinois Dance

My dd attended the fall open house and audition this weekend at University of Illinois.

Coming early for the open house was totally worth it. The day started with the group taking contemporary class from the department head with this year’s current freshman. From the beginning everyone was very welcoming–each visiting person was assigned a “buddy” to help them learn combinations. The class was a classical Limon-based class, though the teacher talked about one of the priorities of the program was exposure to multiple aesthetic/technical perspectives. It was also fun that the parents were able to watch from above in a gallery.

The open house also included a facilities tour (gorgeous performing arts complex), African class observation, meet-and-greet with current students, discussion panel with a guest artist on campus for the semester, and the fall dance performance. My dd LOVED the performance, which included a resetting of a piece by the Batsheva company, a post-modern piece on disaster by a faculty member, a resetting of a classic Limon piece (they have an MFA student who was in the company for many years), and a house piece. So a lot of variety and incredibly well done.

One of the the interesting things is that they have a huge full-time faculty–13 people–for a relatively small program (65 undergrads and 12 grads). Most of the programs my dd is looking at have much smaller full-time faculties with tons of adjuncts–but of course in rural Illinois you don’t have adjunct faculty.

The audition was a 2.25 hour class, solo showing, and interview. My dd said the audition was extremely challenging–and at one point they said the point was not to get it right, but to see how they work through it being hard.

My dd came away feeling like this would be a great fit for her. In the panel with the guest artist, he said one thing that was unique about this program was that it was a good balance of strong technical dancers who are putting time in the studio while still having an emphasis on creative work–which is exactly the balance my dd is trying to strike. Other plusses: collaborations with the theatre department; musical theatre minor; availability of voice lessons; beautiful student union; campus-y campus. Really for us the only (potentially significant) minuses are distance from home and high cost.

Anyone else looking at this program?

This is great! The one thing about attending Dancewave was learning about all of these dance programs. I would have never looked into Illinois. Glad you got to attend onsite.