Dance (BFA)
The BFA in Dance combines the comprehensive liberal arts education of Dominican University of California with the technically rigorous and artistically expansive dance training of Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet. The re-invigoration and continued development of Western Classical Dance (ballet) is at the heart of LINES Ballet’s mission. Utilizing ballet as the foundation, the program will ask students to investigate dance from many different perspectives, discovering the common language of the human experience.
In the art of dance, the dancer is charged with the act of becoming, moment-by-moment, the embodiment of living ideas. With its direct relationship to one of the foremost choreographers of our time, the program stands in a unique position, offering students access to the process and environment in which current thought in the art form is being shaped. Students will be challenged to discover and articulate, through both verbal and physical means, their own point of view as dance artists and human beings.
“In LINES’ training philosophy, each individual’s interior facility is tapped, cajoled, nourished and brought forth. By focusing on individual character, we are offering a key to knowledge and awareness that will be utilized whether or not the student chooses to pursue a performing career in dance.”—Alonzo King
This approach to understanding the interior character of each human being, as expressed by Alonzo King, is in keeping with Dominican’s ideals and the mission of liberal education.
The BFA in Dance reflects a need expressed by dance students (LINES Ballet School and Pre-Professional Program, School of the Arts, Marin Ballet School, San Francisco Ballet School among others) for a program with a strong emphasis on ballet technique and artistry with a contemporary approach.
Of the many BFA in Dance programs nationwide, only a handful emphasizes ballet as their foundation. None of these expressly identify a contemporary approach within a ballet framework. In the professional dance world, companies are increasingly demanding that dancers possess a wide range of skills and knowledge beyond ballet technique. Today’s ballet dancers are being asked to improvise, to generate dance material and participate in the creative processes of dance making to a greater degree than ever before. The LINES/Dominican BFA in Dance program aims to meet these challenges in preparing students for the current professional dance world through a curriculum that combines intensive ballet training with improvisation and composition studies. Of equal importance, the program offers the knowledge and insight of intensive study in an art discipline, which can enrich and inform one's life in profound ways, regardless of career path.
In addition, the program offers a unique opportunity for the pre-professional student of dance not to put on hold their college career. The program is organized to allow dance students to combine their hopes for a professional dance career with the academic and social benefits of a collegiate experience.
