Program Overview

Join our world-renowned dance department with its international and diverse faculty. Our outstanding BA Dance fosters academic and artistic excellence, creativity and innovation, and is taught by artists and researchers who are leading specialists in their fields.

This degree offers an innovative and broad curriculum and provides an excellent grounding for your career in dance and the arts.

You will engage in a comprehensive study of dance, integrating theory with dance practice.

As one of the largest dance departments in the world, we provide a breadth of curricular expertise that is virtually unparalleled and responsive to the needs of each individual student.

We offer daily technique classes with live accompaniment from professional musicians in contemporary core styles such as Cunningham, Graham, Limón, release and contact improvisation.

Exploring familiar and unfamiliar dance forms, from ballet to capoeira to hip hop, you'll be encouraged to reflect on dance in novel ways and develop your analytic skills – for instance, by considering how dance both shapes and is shaped by society, or how choreographers respond to a multicultural and globalised environment.

We have exciting partnerships with a host of choreographers, dance artists and companies. Our students have worked with renowned figures such as Akram Khan, Gaby Agiss, Igor and Moreno, and Rosemary Lee.

You will also study performance and choreography, dance politics and history, and learn about areas such as theatre lighting, stage design and management, and screen dance, to enhance your production and project management abilities, alongside your dance practice.

During this three-year degree, you will follow your own interests, gaining a strong understanding and knowledge of dance in both theory and practice. You will discover many different ways to experience dance, not only in performing, but also a variety of other roles, including educator, artist, community dancer, policymaker, curator and screendance maker

How you will learn:

• You will be taught by world-class tutors, with substantial experience of working with offenders and prisoners, including cases involving domestic violence, child abuse and youth crime.  
• Areas of study include punishment and prisons, gang culture, the criminal justice system and legislation, serial killers, and human trafficking.
• You will become an independent, critical thinker, with the skills to analyse official and popular conceptions of crime.  
• You will learn how to use theory and evidence to solve problems, design your own research projects, and come up with ways to challenge current key ethical, political and moral questions about crime and justice

Placement Year

This course offers all students the option of a one-year paid work placement, to boost your employability even further. If you choose this route, you will take the placement following year two of your course, and then return to complete your degree.

Why take a placement?

A placement year is the perfect opportunity to gain valuable work experience, to build on the career skills we will teach you on this degree. The connections you make on the placement will improve your career prospects further, and equip you with the skills you need to secure graduate-level employment.

How we support you

The University’s Placement and Work Experience Team are experts at helping you to secure a placement. They will work closely with you from the start, helping you research potential employers, discover placement opportunities, create and pitch your CV, and will coach you to perform well in interviews. We aren't able to guarantee a placement, but our sector-leading advisors will give you the best possible chance of securing one.