In this course students explore the question "what is performance?" and how this informs their understanding of an increasingly mediated and globalized world. They examine the broad spectrum of performance in its many forms including theater, dance, visual art, performance art, everyday life, folklore, rituals and celebrations, and protests as well as the processes of each. Students apply readings on performance theory to performance events and sites on campus and beyond. In addition, they engage in an in-depth exploration of both global and intercultural performances and the growing international importance of this field.

Dive into making dances: Students explore how dances get made by creating, shaping, and revising movement in solo and group studies. Hands-on activities, reading, writing, and viewing assignments all spark and support creative work in choreography and improvisation. No prior dance experience required. Open to first-year students.

Devising is a contemporary performance-making practice that declines the traditional single author/choreographer/director/script model of theater in favor of a collaborative approach to generating themes, content, forms, and aesthetics for creating performance. In this hybrid course students learn about devising practices, histories, theories, and politics, and explore devising techniques to practice these methodologies in action.

This course develops an understanding of foundational human anatomy and kinesthetics as applied to bodies in motion. Topics include an introductory study of anatomy; the mechanics of movement; sustainable approaches to functional training and injury prevention in creative and athletic movement modalities. Recommended background: previous dance or movement training. Open to first-year students.

Dance Histories of the United States invites students into creative and critical engagement with history and historiography by examining dance and performance topics and theories. This course encourages students to research contemporary and historical choreographies, dance artists, and pop-culture trends through research into the aesthetic, technical, and conceptual lineages that shape concert, commercial, and social dance forms in the United States. In exploring various histories of modern, jazz, street and club styles, ballet, and folkloric forms, students will gain insight into a multitude of embodied expressions in africanist, europeanist, and indigenous traditions. Students will be asked to engage their curiosity and question the role that dance history plays in developing collective and individual creativity and ingenuity, as well as in resisting and/or reifying notions of power, hierarchy, and privilege in contemporary societies. Course content will include regular reading, writing, personal reflection, viewing assignments, and presentations.

This course offers students opportunities to deepen and refine their approach to making dance through solo and group works. Students will approach making dances through theoretical inquiry and creative play, regularly engaging with readings, informal showings, structured peer feedback, and discussion. The course will culminate in a public studio concert of final projects. Prerequisite(s): DANC 151, 253, 270I, DN/TH 202, or significant choreography for Bates performance clubs.

This course focuses on contemporary dance performance and practices that center, celebrate, and problematize theories of race, gender, sexuality, art, and politics. Course readings, discussions, and creative assignments center Black performance theories and methodologies, including dance, theater, poetry, music, and visual art. Students will also encounter concepts of transnational feminisms and queer fabulation across a variety of dance styles and practices. Course assignments develop students’ abilities in understanding and demonstrating their own positionality, as well as writing and researching across lines of cultural difference. Open to first-year students.

Students experience a variety of approaches to making and performing dance through intensive choreographic residencies with professional guest choreographers, all artists-in-residence at the Bates Dance Festival. The course culminates in the Marcy Plavin Dance Concert at the end of the semester. Recommended background: previous dance experience. This course may be repeated for credit. DANC 253 can be taken multiple times for credit, however can only be attributed to one major requirement per time taken. For example, if a student completes DANC 253 once, it will fulfill either the Creative Process or the Performance and Production requirement. If a student takes DANC 253 twice, one of the completed courses will fulfill Creative Process, and one will fulfill Performance and Production. Co-requisite(s): DANC 270D.

This series of studio courses provides instruction in a variety of dance styles and performing practices. DANC 270 may be repeated for credit without limit. One-half credit is earned for each course completed.

In this entry and open level modern technique course, students address performance, practice, style, and form in order to build strong technique and enhanced artistry and understanding. No prior dance experience required. One-half credit is earned. Open to first-year students.

In this beginner-level ballet technique course, students explore the traditional practice, style, vocabulary and form of classical ballet. No prior dance experience required. One-half credit is earned. Open to first-year students.

Contemporary partnering skills, including contact improvisation skills, weight sharing, spatial and physical relationships, and personal responsibility, are combined with contemporary modern dance techniques. Recommended background: previous dance experience. Open to first-year students.

This intermediate-advanced dance technique course explores various approaches to dance training and practice as experienced with different guest teachers throughout the semester. Students enrolled in this course (and not DANC253) have the option of performing in one piece in the Marcy Plavin Fall Dance Concert. One-half credit is earned. Open to first-year students. Recommended background: intermediate experience in dance and some contemporary modern training.

In this mixed-level technique course, students address jazz dance performance, practice, style, and form in order to build strong technique as well as to enhance artistry and understanding. Recommended background: experience in dance. One-half credit is earned. Open to first-year students.

This intermediate-level course focuses on contemporary modern or African-American vernacular dance practices, clarity of intention, and general performance skills, in order to maintain a strong technique and develop one's personal contribution to ensemble dancing. Recommended background: intermediate experience in dance. One-half credit is earned. Open to first-year students.

In this intermediate-level ballet course, students strengthen their technique and enhance their artistry through the practice of classical ballet. This level is appropriate for returning beginner and/or intermediate dancers who are already at ease with the ballet vocabulary. Recommended background: DANC 270B or experience in ballet technique. One-half credit is earned. Open to first-year students.

Students explore improvisational dance skills essential to any style of dance through the use of body weight, momentum, and physical contact. Some familiarity with any form of dance is helpful. One-half credit is earned. Open to first-year students.

This course invites students into the study of Hip Hop dance, approaching it as both a physical discipline and a cultural form. Rather than surveying multiple styles, the class centers on one tradition and explores how it has taken shape through community, creativity, and lived experience. Students will engage with foundational movement ideas, experiment with personal expression, and consider how Hip Hop dance reflects and responds to the world around it. Throughout the semester, participants will develop tools for ongoing growth as movers and thinkers—cultivating rhythm, awareness, adaptability, and creative problem solving. The course encourages students to challenge themselves physically and mentally, explore different ways of learning through the body, and make connections between movement, identity, and broader social contexts. The emphasis is on exploration, process, and the evolving relationship between the dancer, the form, and the culture that shapes it. One-half credit is earned. Open to first-year students.

This movement-centralized course will offer students a deep dive into Hip Hop social dances that span over five decades of American popular culture. This course highlights aesthetically interwoven themes that extend from the African Diaspora, ultimately informing the creation of Hip Hop dance over time. Moving from traditional Hip Hop social dances, we will geographically locate and practice dances extending from Hip Hop's profound influence, such as "Litefeet" movement vocabulary out of Harlem, NY. Students will learn tools for their Hip Hop freestyle, ultimately utilizing learned movements to develop their way of speaking Hip Hop as a movement language to connect with and build the collective. This class situates Hip Hop social dance as an African American vernacular form and its popular culture influence as highly relevant in the contemporary dance canon. Recommended background: one or two semesters in DANC 270K or previous experience in Hip Hop. One-half credit is earned. Open to first-year students.

This advanced-level course focuses on contemporary modern or African-American vernacular dance practices, clarity of intention, and general performance skills, in order to maintain a strong technique and develop one's personal contribution to ensemble dancing in the studio and on the stage. Recommended background: advanced experience in dance training. One-half credit is earned.

In this advanced-level ballet course, students strengthen their technique and enhance their artistry through the practice of classical ballet. This level is appropriate for the intermediate-advanced dancer who has prior training in classical ballet at the intermediate-advanced level. One-half credit is earned. Open to first-year students.

This course will explore the principles of sensation-driven learning, the yoga and dance movements to awaken kinesthetic, proprioceptive, and interoceptive awareness. Focus shifts from achieving aesthetically pleasing movement to discovering greater movement efficiency, freedom of expression, self-agency, awareness, and creativity. No prior dance experience is required. One-half credit is earned. Open to first-year students.

An introduction to the exercises and principles of classical Pilates. This physical training course uses the Pilates method and complementary conditioning techniques to develop core strength, alignment, and flexibility. This course is designed for physical performers, but useful for bodies of all kinds. One-half credit is earned. Open to first-year students.

Working under faculty direction, students perform major roles in departmental productions as a performer (290A); stage manager, associate stage manager, technician (290B); designer, dramaturg, assistant director (290C). One-half credit is earned. May be repeated.

For students with previous kinesthetic training who can demonstrate fluency and commitment to their practice, this course provides Bates students with the opportunity to participate in the Bates Dance Festival Professional Training Program. Full participation in this summer program requires 30 weekly hours of technical training across multiple dance disciplines and theoretical practices. Festival courses are taught by leading scholars, artists, and practitioners in their fields. An integral part of this course is attending festival concerts, informal showings, discussions, and video presentations. This course may be repeated for credit.

This course offers students opportunities to deepen and refine their approach to making dance with dedicated attention to devising and directing new dance works from ideation to performance. Students will approach making dances through theoretical inquiry and creative play, regularly engaging with readings, critical analysis, informal showings, structured peer feedback, and discussion. The course will offer students opportunities to develop project proposals, broaden their approach to interdisciplinarity in dance-making, and prepare to produce independent creative projects. The course will culminate in a public studio concert of final projects.Prerequisite(s): DANC 202, 251, 253, or significant choreography for Bates performance clubs.

Students, in consultation with a faculty advisor, individually design and plan a course of study or research not offered in the curriculum. Course work includes a reflective component, evaluation, and completion of an agreed-upon product. Sponsorship by a faculty member in the program/department, a course prospectus, and permission of the chair are required. Students may register for no more than one independent study per semester.

A substantial creative research project in dance, usually in the form of choreographic, performance, and/or written work. Student artists register for DANC 457 in the Fall semester. Successful completion of this course qualifies as a thesis credit toward the dance major.

A substantial creative research project in dance, usually in the form of choreographic, performance, and/or written work. Student artists register for DANC 458 in the Winter semester. Successful completion of this course qualifies as a thesis credit toward the dance major.

This course introduces students to applications of a dance practice both inside and outside the field of professional performance and helps them to create a model for a dance practice that they can carry with them beyond Bates. Students also take a daily contemporary modern dance-based movement class and develop an individual project in an area of dance research that models a dance practice for them. This course is part of the Purposeful Work Infusion Project, a programming element of the college’s Purposeful Work initiative. The Purposeful Work Infusion Project is a curricular opportunity that seeks to bridge the gap between course content and "purposeful work," which may include careers, identity, meaning, and purpose. All Purposeful Work Infusion courses include three elements: at least one reading assignment related to "purposeful work"; at least one reflective writing assignment on "purposeful work"; and at least the equivalent of one class session's discussion focused on bridging the gap between course content and "purposeful work.” Recommended background: At least one college-level dance course or intermediate level of proficiency in any dance form.