Reed College

Dance majors at Reed exercise the critical skills valued throughout liberal arts education: the ability to approach and solve problems of many kinds, the ability to deeply investigate a subject matter, the ability to make informed choices from a range of possibilities and the ability to contextualize specific ideas and events among the modes of thought and cultural phenomena that shape our understanding of the world. Dance, as a field, is well suited to this endeavor because it develops one's capacity for a multi-leveled understanding of a wide variety of phenomena—cultural, artistic and formal. The department believes a Reed liberal arts education fosters a creative and contextual approach to dance. All Reed dance majors pursue both creative and critical work, but may choose an emphasis in dance studies—history, theory, critical and cultural studies—or dance studio—technique, choreography, improvisation, and performance. Seniors emphasizing dance studies undertake thesis projects that are focused in scholarly research but may also include a creative component. Seniors emphasizing dance studio undertake projects in which research supports an extensive creative endeavor, and have the opportunity to stage a fully produced performance of their work. Reed dancers may also pursue the established Dance-Theatre major, a Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) major that emphasizes dance, or propose an ad-hoc interdisciplinary major; past graduates have pursued majors in dance/Spanish, dance/Russian, dance/psychology, and dance/history. Additionally, students majoring in Comparative Literature and Psychology may focus on Dance as an allied field. The department successfully prepares students—both majors and non-majors—for specialized work in dance at the graduate and professional levels. Recent honors given to Reed dance students have included the Watson Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.