About the BFA Program

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The Bachelors of Fine Arts (BFA) in Dance program is committed to cultivating a rigorous curriculum that draws upon multiple disciplinary and artistic approaches while encouraging students to position their own work and development within broad social contexts. Our curriculum is designed to develop concrete skills in performance, choreography, and pedagogy and to instill an intellectually broad and deep appreciation of the role that dance plays in human culture around the world while ensuring our students are competitive in the current marketplace. We are committed to academic excellence, diversity, freedom of expression, activism, social transformation and civic responsibility. Our BFA program’s priority is to cultivate artist-citizens committed to leadership, community, equity and social justice. 

Our program encourages integration of the curricular areas, supports an interdisciplinary approach, promotes the education of the whole person, values cultural and curricular diversity, and responds to the individual needs of students, faculty, the dance field, and our broader culture. Students leave the program with the skills, perspective and imagination to be visionaries, advocates, and leaders in the field of dance and in their communities.

The mission of the BFA is to be an exciting and diversified dance program. Defined by a varied and dynamic blend of physical practice, creative practice and embodied theory, The BFA trains students to: 

  • Both deepen and broaden physical training; 
  • Develop choreographic skills, explore experimental technologies (IM, Video, Dance Theatre), in service to becoming sophisticated and nuanced artists in general;
  • Cultivate an understanding between performance and culturally inclusive and critically rigorous pedagogy; 
  • Deepen and expand one’s understanding of the art and practice of performance (via formal and informal performances, in-progress showings, scholarly lectures etc.);
  • Become an arts activist, arts educator and advocate;
  • And to develop scholarly expertise and sophistication in culture and the arts in general.  

 

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An audition is required for the BFA; see Apply to BFA program for dates and information. Be sure to take a look at our Majors and their work.

Please see our

for an example of a planning document that students use to track their course progress to graduation, alongside other university resources, advising staff, and faculty mentors. 

No audition is required for the Dance Minor. Please email for an advising appointment to declare the Minor; see Minor program for more information.

All students are welcome to take our elective classes; see Elective courses for more information.
 

 

 

[pdf] - Some links on this page are to Adobe .pdf files requiring the use of Adobe Reader. If you need them in a more accessible format, please contact dance@osu.edu 

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