Module overview

These practical classes provide a framework for you to explore movement potential using a variety of approaches. Technical, performance, improvisational and interpretative skills are addressed using the interplay between action, imagination, observation and questioning.

You will be encouraged to reflect on your own practices as dancers and to find ways to explore detailed kinesthetic awareness through testing (trial and error) and to define how movement is experienced in relation to space, time and gravity. You will be involved in expressive and interpretative tasks in response to music, sound accompaniment or text and work with other dancers to locate synergies and sensitivity in your danced relationships.

You will experience a variety of practices as part of the portfolio. The approach and demands of each class will vary according to the interests and expertise of each tutor offering a range of experiences from within the professional field.

Teaching and learning

The delivery of this modules is four, one and half hour practical studio sessions per week.

There will be an additional 30 minutes of digital support per week. This will consist of audio-visual resources that accompany and support the practice delivery. 

Teaching practice is aligned with the core principles of UDL and our philosophy is to be inclusive, respectful and accessible to all. Practical classes, workshops, peer review and tutorials. Peer review and critical feedback will be included in all sessions and tutorials can be booked during office hours.

Formative feedback is inherent in the delivery of a dance practice sessions and provided through manifold embodied perspectives covering the full range of learning styles, including physical/kinaesthetic, aural/auditory-musical, visual/spatial, verbal/linguistic, logical/anatomy-somatic, intra and interpersonal approaches.

Furthermore, every session involves tasks and/or mini projects which provide opportunities for peer and tutor feedback and formative learning.  

Group and individual tutorials outside of the taught sessions offer opportunities to discuss individual interests, challenges and projects. 

Assessment

This module will be assessed using a practical class 1 (30%) and a practical 2 (50%).

Module overview

This module interrogates practically and theoretically the question of what happens when we have a creative encounter. It investigates what happens when we have a creative encounter with others, such as established and novel lines of enquiry for dancers and performers; encounters in new settings in and outside of dance; and in and with institutions such as museums; work with and for different communities; and critical artistic engagement with past and present contexts.

It investigates how we might engage together in a creative practice and queries why a practice might be important, or excluding, or lean into an embodied, relational engagement necessary to create the work we are passionate about.

The module will explore topics that put the creative encounter front and centre, for example, leadership and collaboration, working with other professional artists and those who come to dance for the first time; delving into the topics of cultural heritage and community; institutional contexts and working through how we use creative practice to engage with topics such as care, socially engaged facilitation, audience relation, direction, producing, curating; showcasing topics connected to why we do this, for example to make an impact on health, empowerment, society, audiences, institutions, cultural engagement and interpretation; creating the ‘what if...’, using our imaginations to set up creative encounters as dance activists, artists, vision-makers of the future.

Teaching and learning

This is a year-long module, consisting of one, two-hour seminar, workshop or experiential laboratory per week.

The sessions will be a mixture of practical and theoretical engagement and indicated clearly to students.

There will be an additional 30 minutes of online digital support per week. This will consist of audio-visual resources will deepen understanding and support practice and thinking.

Assessment

This module will be assessed using a digital exposition (50%) and a project presentation (50%).

Module overview

This module develops the work studied in Dance Practice. Approaching Performance and will deepen technical and artistic understanding and their exploration of movement potential using a range of practices.

You will critically interrogate your technical knowledge of dancing and deepen your awareness of communicating movement. You will be involved in expressive and interpretative tasks in response to music, sound accompaniment or text and work with other dancers to locate synergies and sensitivity in their danced relationships. Focus will be on performative qualities alongside essential technical practice.

Via a performative presentation, you can demonstrate advanced performance skills and the problems and possibilities of ‘being seen’ (Deborah Hay) considering ‘dancing as an ensemble’ as well as the performer-audience relationship.

You will experience a variety of practices as part of the portfolio. The approach and demands of each class will vary according to the interests and expertise of each tutor offering a range of experiences from within the professional field.

Teaching and learning

This module consists of four, one and a half dance studio practice classes per week

Teaching practice is aligned with the core principles of UDL and our philosophy is to be inclusive, respectful and accessible to all.

Practical classes, workshops, peer review and tutorials. Peer review and critical feedback will be included in all sessions and tutorials can be booked during office hours.

Formative feedback is inherent in the delivery of a dance practice sessions and provided through manifold embodied perspectives covering the full range of learning styles, including physical/kinaesthetic, aural/auditory-musical, visual/spatial, verbal/linguistic, logical/anatomy-somatic, intra and interpersonal approaches.

Every session involves tasks and/or mini projects which provide opportunities for peer and tutor feedback and formative learning.  

Group and individual tutorials outside of the taught sessions offer opportunities to discuss individual interests, challenges and projects. 

There will be an additional 30 minutes of online digital support per week. This will consist of audio-visual resources that accompany and support the practice delivery. 

Assessment

This module will be assessed using a practical dance class (50%) and a performative studio presentation (50%).

Module overview

This module invites you to interrogate artistic and performance practices, including your own modes of making, as forms of research discovery. It explores the relations between practice and different forms of codified and non-codified knowledge from the perspective of practitioners in dance, performance or other creative practices; and through exploration of concepts, theories and assumptions which underpin and inform performance.

Combining practice-as-research methodologies with philosophical enquiry, you will be challenged to deploy a range of critical research methodologies which combine the kinaesthetic, the self-reflective and the theoretical.

The module supports you to understand how artistic processes can be used to generate and embrace a multiplicity of conceiving, engaging and generating knowledges. Key topics include the nature of performance as art, epistemology, and the aesthetics and ethics of dance and performance, including the questioning of power structures within the field. These issues are examined through a combination of readings, discussions, practical tasks and embodied experiences, providing space to consider the cultural, political and ethical ramifications of performance practices in studio-based, classroom-based and hybrid settings.

Teaching and learning

This module is taught through a one, two-hour seminar and one, two-hour hybrid session per week.

Lecture and seminars will cover philosophical examinations of performance, while hybrid sessions interrogate the nature of artistic practices as a method of research. 

There will be an additional 30 minutes of online digital support per week. This will consist of audio-visual resources will deepen understanding and support practice and thinking.

Assessment

This module will be assessed using a presentation (50%) and a blog (50%).

This module is one of the programme’s core compulsory modules for the MA in Dance Education. It builds upon the concepts and skills introduced in the modules Dance Practice, Thinking Through Performance, Creative Encounters and Approaching Performance. Drawing on existing knowledge, research and pedagogical understanding of dance education, it examines experiences of teaching and learning through dance practice to develop new practical teaching skills and support future professional approaches.

This module examines the landscape of current dance practice and the challenges of delivering classes and workshops across diverse global and cultural contexts. It offers you opportunities to examine and advance skills for safe, creative, and effective teaching of studio and workshop practice. You will engage with a range of educational theories and frameworks, reflecting critically on their own teaching practice and pedagogy. The module introduces practical teaching strategies designed to enhance skill mastery while fostering self-esteem, self-efficacy, and positive self-image in participants through inclusive practice.  

Research from cross-cultural dance pedagogy, education, psychology, community dance, and somatic practice will inform teaching and learning strategies throughout this module. You will prepare for, experience, and deliver mentored classes and workshops, beginning with a comprehensive analysis of their own values and experiences. This foundational step is crucial for understanding individual teaching philosophies and the influence of cultural heritage on teaching styles. It leads to micro-teaching and progresses to longer, more complex delivery in a range of contexts.  

How you'll learn:

This will be a Spring term module consisting of 1 x 2-hour lecture/seminar and 1 x 2 hours of practical in-studio session per week. The sessions follow a hybrid of practical and theoretical delivery and will be clearly indicated to students through timetabling and the weekly module schedule.  There will be an additional 30 minutes of asynchronous digital support per week. This will consist of audio–visual resources.   

This Independent Dance Education Project serves as the ‘exit’ module for the MA Dance Education programme. It is designed to encapsulate your learning throughout the programme, offer a presentation of where you see yourself as a dance educator, and assess your readiness to embark or re-embark on your professional career. The module provides opportunities for you to undertake independent practice research, culminating in a dance education project that reflects your research interests and extrapolates the dance education discourse  you have encountered through the programme.

You will be encouraged to cultivate a professional, outward facing project that enables you to formulate a distinctive vision for advancing your practice. This module facilitates your exploration, envisioning and planning of dance education programmes, diverse curricula, workshop facilitation, and rehearsal methodologies. The module utilises and expands your existing knowledge and understanding of dance education by examining experiences of teaching and learning across broad dance contexts, while refining practical pedagogical skills and applying digital approaches through presentations.

You will be encouraged to criticise, re-examine, re-invent or disrupt the perspectives of dance education and to consider your implications for educators, learners, participants, and institutions, within the broad spectrum of dance education and cross-cultural pedagogy.

You will develop original research which is supported by tutorials, peer review and workshops. The module operates as a series of practical workshops, laboratory tasks, feedback sessions, seminars and tutorials. Key feedback points are scheduled to prepare you for independent work and to meet professional practice standards.