What You’ll Study in the Dance Minor
Study the synergy between critical and creative work in the dance minor at Reed College. Examine the history and culture of dance, and refine your technical skills in our state-of-the-art studio and performance spaces.
Why Take Dance Courses at Reed College?
Two Dance Emphases: Studies and Studio
All Reed dance minors pursue both critical and creative work. Take courses that expand your understanding of the history, theory, critical and cultural studies of dance, and build your performance skills with courses that focus on your technical proficiency, choreographic abilities, improvisation skills, and performance artistry. With these two distinct emphases, our dance department provides a robust and multifaceted dance program that caters to diverse interests and aspirations within the field.
Explore Dance Globally
- Explore dance as a complex site of cultural negotiation, contestation, and exchange in Reed's contemporary global dance course. Trace transnational dance diasporas across the global north/south axis and across the Atlantic Ocean to discover how global dance flows animate the formation of national, racial, ethnic, and gendered (post)colonial identities, chart global migration patterns, mobilize transnational political economies, and complicate facile understandings of cultural authenticity.
- In Reed's dance, race, and gender course, examine the intersections between dance studies and constructions of racial and gender identities. Discover how dance intersects with questions of labor, class, ability, and sexuality through a wide range of historical and contemporary practices, including social dance, concert dance, site-specific performance, dance as visual art, and popular forms.
The Creativity of Reed’s Dance Professors
When students returned to campus in fall 2020, they encountered outdoor classrooms, hybrid courses, and, in the case of dance, a safe and cohesive system that allowed dancers to return to Reed's Performing Arts Building.
Read "Pirouetting Through the Pandemic"
