CORNISH. DANCE
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EQUAL OPPORTUNITY Cornish College of the Arts does not discriminate in education or employment on the basis of: gender, race, national origin, religion, age, marital status, sexual orientation, disability or veteran status. This policy is consistent with relevant federal regulations and statutes, including those pursuant to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Questions regarding the application of this policy and information on services for disabled persons may be referred to the Dean of Student Affairs or the Director of Human Resources.
Back Cover: Cornish Dance Theater performs Pat Hon’s Etudes. Photo: Chris Bennion.
QUESTIONS? EMAIL: admission@cornish.edu PHONE: 206.726.5016 or 800.726.ARTS FAX: 206.720.1011 MAIL: 1000 Lenora St., Seattle WA 98121
Front Cover: Cornish Dance Theater performs Tonya Lockyer’s Fitter. Happier. More Productive. Photo: Chris Bennion
www.cornish.edu/dance.
DANCE
You not only learn proficient dance technique and choreographic craft at Cornish — you also define your personal artistic interests and direction and develop an entrepeneurial approach to your career. These wide-ranging skills remain with you for the rest of your professional life.
Pointe Class. Photo: Colleen Dishy
The Cornish Dance program offers a holistic educational focus that addresses the heart and mind as well as the body. We give you the tools to create a sustainable life in dance: strong technique, choreographic voice and teaching experience.
Cornish Dance Theater performs Merce Cunningham’s minEvent. Photo: Chris Bennion
DANCE DEPARTMENT LIFE
The Cornish Dance Department provides a stimulating and nurturing environment that supports your technical, creative and intellectual development while preparing you for a broad range of professional careers in dance. Cornish faculty are professionals who “do” as well as teach. They know what it takes to succeed in dance and are eager to share their knowledge with you. In our small classes, faculty members are able to oversee students’ progress on a day-to-day basis, becoming professional mentors.
“The entire Cornish experience—faculty, location and peers—provides students with an incredibly vast wealth of knowledge that guides us along a path of artistic discovery and growth.” — REBecca Green, DA ‘13
You join a community of students committed to becoming professional dancers who want to eat, think, sleep and dream dance. Our department atmosphere is warm and supportive, with students drawing inspiration from one another We emphasize training healthy dancers who have both the self-confidence to enter a challenging field and the physical understanding that leads to professional longevity. Our Dance Wellness program includes conditioning exercises to prevent injuries and on-campus physical therapy.
DANCE Curriculum
Ballet Class. Photo: Colleen Dishy
Your Cornish coursework includes challenging classes that broaden and deepen your understanding of dance. You spend six to eight hours each day in dance courses, with at least 16 hours of technique classes per week. Daily ballet and modern dance classes form the core of our technique curriculum with elective courses offered in pointe, partnering, men’s technique, jazz, hip hop, tap, world dance, vocal skills, martial arts, conditioning and somatic techniques. We teach you how to make the most of your physical potential by emphasizing anatomically-sound technique and providing courses in anatomy and injury prevention.
Our curriculum places equal emphasis on physical mastery and creative expression. A three-year sequence of courses in choreography and improvisation develops your knowledge of choreographic craft and fosters the development of your personal voice. You learn to create dance films, using digital technology to blend movement with video and sound.
Courses in teaching methods, stage production, and dance business practices (concert production, grant writing and fundraising) expand your career opportunities. You can gain international experience through a study abroad program in your junior year.
Your BFA program culminates in a senior project developed under faculty guidance. Most often this involves choreography and a performance open to the public.
“Every day I am immersed in a community of constant support, challenging myself to practice discipline, patience and artistry. I am pushed intellectually, emotionally and physically, gradually becoming the dancer I aspire to be.” — Ariana Bird, DA ‘14
DANCE Performance & Choreographic Opportunities
Cornish Dance Theater performs Pat Hon’s Las Hermanas. Photo: Chris Bennion
“In Cornish Dance Theater I have performed a variety of styles in a professional rehearsal environment.” — Sam Opsal, DA ’14
Extraordinary performance opportunities complement your intensive class work. Cornish Dance Theater, the department’s performing ensemble, presents a concert each semester with choreography by faculty and professional visiting choreographers. CDT’s diverse repertory includes ballet, modern and jazz dances as well as stagings of historic masterworks. Recent guest choreographers have included Robert Battle, Camille Brown, Bill Evans, Jason Ohlberg, Olivier Wevers and Daniel Cruz. CDT also performs site specific dances in cultural venues and environments around Seattle.
You have many opportunities to explore your own creative vision through student choreographed productions. Our annual New Moves and BFA Senior Project concerts present student choreography and provide additional performance opportunities. You can collaborate with students from other artistic disciplines on creative projects, both in live performances and screen works that use digital technology to blend dance with video and sound. You can also perform in interdepartmental productions such as musicals.
Modern Dance class taught by Michele Miller. Photo: Colleen Dishy
DANCE faculty & visiting artists
At Cornish College of the Arts, the faculty are practicing artists who are devoted to their students’ progress. With professional backgrounds in all areas of dance (performance, choreography, teaching, dance science, somatic techniques and more), they know what it takes to succeed in dance and are eager to share their knowledge with you. Acting as mentors, your teachers will help you to discover and pursue your own dance path. Our Dance Department is headed by Kathryn “Kitty” Daniels, who is nationally known as a teacher of ballet and dance science. Core faculty include Iyun Harrison, Pat Hon, Wade Madsen, Lodi McClellan, Michelle Miller, and Deborah Wolf.
Classes with visiting artists enhance the curriculum and expose dancers to different aesthetic perspectives. The Dance Department sponsors visiting artist residencies and master classes each year with some of the nation’s leading dance artists, including Donald McKayle, Danny Buraczeski, Danielle Agami, Donald Byrd, Bebe Miller, Summer Rhatigan, Tina Fehlandt, Keith Terry, Rhonda Miller and Lynn Simonson.
“I am inspired daily by my faculty colleagues and students to discover new ways to communicate concepts, unveiling the maximum potential of each of my students.” — Michele Miller, Associate Professor
Cornish Dance Theater performs Wade Madsen’s Honky Tonky. Photo: Chris Bennion
DANCE Launching your career
Our holistic approach and broad professional training prepare you for success as a performer, choreographer and teacher, as well as related fields such as body therapies, conditioning techniques (including Pilates and Gyrotonic), arts administration and stage production. Our alumni are especially successful in creating opportunities by forming their own companies and exploring collaborative and cross-disciplinary interests.
Dance Department graduates and former students have performed with prominent companies including the Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane, Mark Morris, and Shen Wei dance companies. They have produced their choreography at Seattle’s On the Boards, New York’s Live Arts and other centers for innovation. Numerous Seattle dance companies were founded by Cornish dance alumni.
Our alumni have succeeded in graduate studies at such respected programs as Ohio State University, University of Utah, and University of California/Irvine. They have gone on to teach in a variety of settings from colleges to professional and private studios.
“Cornish has given me the skill set to create a life in the arts as well as the resolve and self-confidence to pursue any movement career I choose.” — Jolene Winner-Ziemer, DA ’12
DANCE SEATTLE
At Cornish your education isn’t limited to the classroom. In Seattle, a city which leads the Pacific Northwest in artistic innovation in dance, you find a vibrant arts community. You are in the center of this flourishing environment, with many of Seattle’s leading dance professionals on our faculty. As a student at Cornish, you use the professional dance community as your classroom: attending performances, performing works by leading choreographers, and presenting your choreography on professional showcases. You learn to network with professionals to develop your career.
Cornish Dance Theater performs Alia Swersky’s Beneath Our Own Immensity in Seattle’s I-5 Colonnade Park
Touring companies such as the Mark Morris Dance Group, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Alonzo King/LINES, Kidd Pivot, Compania Nacional de Danza, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater teach master classes at Cornish, enhancing your global professional connections. In your senior year, you are invited to pursue internships with Seattle dance organizations, facilitating your transition from student to professional dancer.
“In Seattle, I am exposed to art in all its forms. Constantly looking at professional artists’ work helps me discover what I like, what inspires me, and the direction I want to take my career.” — Oralee Skeath, DA ‘15
DANCE Beyond Your Major
You explore the full range of your creative interests by taking courses in the other Cornish artistic disciplines. From acting and singing to web design and photography, you will expand your artistic knowledge while fulfilling your Arts Electives degree requirement. Interdepartmental courses such as the Interdisciplinary Arts Workshop allow you to create cross-disciplinary projects, while courses in community arts practices give you the tools to make a difference in the world with your art. Through experiences such as these you meet other artists of your generation, forming artistic partnerships that will last a lifetime.
Cornish Dance Theater performs Merce Cunningham’s MinEvent in Cornish Main Gallery. Photo: Michelle Smith-Lewis
“At Cornish, I’ve found that many students from other departments are eager to collaborate. Whether I’m interested in working with a painter, sculptor, actor, or composer, the opportunities are always there.” — Oralee Skeath, DA ‘15
DANCE ALUMNa Corrie Befort
“I am so grateful for the rigorous, attentive technique and expansive study my Cornish teachers offered—both challenge and empowerment to blaze my own way into a life of dancing.”
Corrie Befort performs Titan Arum. Photo: Tim Summers
— CORRIE BEFORT, DA ‘99
Since graduating from Cornish in 1999, Corrie Befort has been performing and choreographing for stage and screen internationally. Commissioned by companies, schools and dancers, she has become known for rigorous collaborations. Co-director of the Seattlebased dance/sound/visual theater company Salt Horse, her work has toured the United States and Japan, while her film-work has received awards in the United States and Europe. She has performed with Scott/Powell Performance, Sheri Cohen Ensemble and Natsuko Tezuka among others. Corrie also teaches in the Puget Sound area Dance for Parkinsons Program, developed by the Mark Morris Dance Group.
Humanities & Sciences Liberal Studies Learning and the BFA Degree
An essential component of your BFA degree includes the courses you will take outside of your major in the Humanities and Sciences Department. As the general education division of the College, we provide a liberal studies curriculum that engages Cornish students in an exploration of the social, environmental and cultural contexts in which artistic production takes place, while developing critical thinking, problem-solving and communication skills. The curriculum helps you consider multiple perspectives when looking at complex problems and issues, drawing on a variety of ways to understand the world and our human experience. Our curriculum is constantly changing and inquiry based. It is intended to engage you in active analysis and problem-solving in relation to thematic issues that may have a long-
standing history, but that continue to challenge contemporary societies and individuals, both locally and globally. Classes are limited in size and conducted “seminar style.� Students at Cornish are not passive learners; they contribute to and help shape the experience in their classes. Many classes go into the community, exploring the urban and natural environment, doing field observations and visiting local organizations and the people involved in them. Both in and out of the classroom, instructors in Humanities and Sciences help you acquire the kind of confidence and competence that will serve you well both during and after college, in your personal and professional lives. In the end, our aim in Humanities and Sciences is to inspire the curiosity and habits necessary for life-long learning and development.