School of Performing Arts
1 WELCOME
Welcome to the School of Performing Arts! The School of Performing Arts has an impressive history shaped by contemporary arts practice. We offer a broad range of degree courses at our Walsall campus. I am confident that if you’re offered a place, studying with us will develop your performance and confidence, challenge your thinking and deepen your understanding of your chosen subject. You will study at arguably the most advanced performing arts space in UK higher education, the Performance Hub. In addition to its industry-standard equipment and magnificent rehearsal and performance spaces, we also boast All-Steinway School status, one of the first universities in England to do so.
We’ll help you to develop your individual style, whether in music, dance or drama – achieving a degree from the University of Wolverhampton is a perfect preparation for the realities of the world of work. I’d like to invite you to join our creative academic community of industry professionals, expert technicians and internationally recognised researchers to start your future as a confident, capable practitioner.
John Pymm Dr John Pymm Dean of the Faculty of Arts
Contents 2
Contents Dance - 3 Dance courses Specialist facilities promoting inspiring movement
Drama and Musical Theatre - 5 Drama and Musical Theatre courses A place to perform
Music - 7 Music courses Specialist facilities to make you a maestro
Choices after undergraduate study - 9 Postgraduate courses Our research excellence
Supporting your career - 11 Employability
Student successes - 13 Honouring the trailblazers - 15 Join us - 16 How to apply
3 Dance
Dance
As a student of dance, you’ll be able to focus on a variety of dance areas such as dance practice and performance (contemporary, ballet and jazz dance), choreography, dance and film, dance science and health, cultural studies, movement analysis, dance and education, and work-based projects.
Dance courses • BA (Hons) Dance • BA (Hons) Dance and Drama
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Specialist facilities promoting inspiring movement Our flagship building on Walsall Campus, The Performance Hub provides outstanding facilities to explore musicality and movement in an environment perfectly tailored to your needs. There are a five large dance and drama teaching and performance studios with Harlequin floors and lighting rigs, as well as a number of spacious dance and drama rehearsal rooms. Our students also have access to the University’s Arena Theatre on Wolverhampton City Campus – an acclaimed venue for small-scale touring companies and student performances. As well as providing everything you need to explore your craft, you’ll find all the specialist books and journals to support your studies in our Learning Centres, and a wide range of ways to keep your body and mind in the best condition to pursue your ambitions.
5 Drama and Musical Theatre
Drama and Musical Theatre As a student of Drama and Musical Theatre, you’ll be able to explore through practice a range of contemporary forms, techniques and processes of performance making. You will be able to develop specialisms in diverse areas such as acting, physical theatre, comedy, design, education and writing, with support from specialist staff and visiting practitioners, including our range of industry partners. Your practice will be supported by theoretical and analytical work, developing your understanding of your chosen discipline.
Drama and Musical Theatre courses • BA (Hons) Creative Theatre Technologies • BA (Hons) Dance and Drama • BA (Hons) Drama • BA (Hons) Drama and Musical Theatre • BA (Hons) Musical Theatre
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A place to perform The Performance Hub on our Walsall Campus has a dramatic presence of its own. It encloses exceptional facilities perfectly tailored to explore stagecraft in all its forms. Its teaching and performance studios and spacious dance and drama rehearsal rooms provide a professional environment ideally suited to learning and practising your chosen discipline to the highest standard. The black box studio theatre has some of the best performing arts facilities on offer at a university anywhere in the country, and you’ll also have access to the University’s Arena Theatre on Wolverhampton City Campus, where the compact space will allow you to concentrate your performance to ideally suit a more intimate atmosphere. As well as providing everything you need to explore your craft, you’ll find all the specialist books and journals to support your studies in our Learning Centres, and a wide range of ways to keep your body and mind in the best condition to pursue your ambitions.
7 Music
Music We’ll help you to be a versatile and practical musician, able to write about and discuss aspects of music and be confident in using relevant ideas, theories and methodologies. Focused on giving you a blend of creative practice in music with a technical perspective critical for success within the global music industry, our performance-based degrees give you the opportunity to cover a wide range of musical areas such as public performance, song writing, composition and musicology. We are also at the forefront of the rapidly developing field of music technology, allowing you to concentrate on audio production, acoustics, creative computing, synthesis and video game sound.
Music courses • BMus (Hons) Music • BA (Hons) Music Technology • BA (Hons) Musical Theatre • BMus (Hons) Music Technology and Popular Music • BMus (Hons) Popular Music
music 8
Specialist facilities to make you a maestro You will have access to modern facilities on both Walsall and City Campus, including IT suites and Learning Centres featuring the very latest technology and resources to support your learning. The Performance Hub has an impressive scale of facilities to support you in the production, performance, and perfection of your chosen musical genre. Its range of fully-equipped music teaching, performance and practice rooms includes: two high-end professional recording studios with an SSL AWS948 console and PMC surround monitoring; and two bespoke technology suites boasting sixty Macs running industrystandard software such as Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Pure Data, SuperCollider, Sibelius and Final Cut Pro. And to cap it all, the University of Wolverhampton was only the third university in the UK to achieve allSteinway status, which means that at least 90% of our pianos are designed and built by Steinway, the world’s leading piano manufacturer, helping you hit the right note in every performance. The University also has a number of innovative partnerships with commercial and professional providers. We’ve been delivering our degree in Professional Music in association with The International College of Music, Kuala Lumpur, since 2009. Together with The Academy of Music & Sound – the only national network of music centres offering specialist, instrument specific courses in the UK – we deliver degrees in Music Performance and Creative Music Technology to over 250 students in a number of centres across England and Scotland. An exciting new on-line degree is poised to reach the whole of the UK as well as an international market.
9 Choices after undergraduate study
Choices after undergraduate study Postgraduate study
We have five postgraduate programmes available in full or part-time mode (except Dance, available part-time only): • • • • •
MA Dance MSc Dance Science MA Drama MMus Music MSc Audio Technology
Each programme offers opportunities to further enhance, broaden and deepen your practice, with opportunities for inter and cross-disciplinary work. To explore your postgraduate options, visit: wlv.ac.uk/postgrad
Choices after undergraduate study 10
Our research excellence We are involved in a variety of research initiatives, developing a national and international reputation for excellence in the performing arts, recognised by a high number of staff entered into the Research Excellence Framework 2014. The research and professional practice of our staff enriches our undergraduate curriculum, and your studies will benefit from their expert insight. We have a range of PhD opportunities including scholarly and practice-led research across Dance, Drama, Music, Musical Theatre and Music Technology. Across these areas, research focuses on performance as it relates to: analysis; the body, identity and culture; contemporary practice; experimental theatre; new technologies; pedagogic practices; politics, popular performance and scenography. Past research in the Music Department involved collaborations with the Kreutzer Quartet, the Royal Academy of Music, and the internationally-renowned composer, Michael Finnissy (Visiting Professor in Music Composition, 2007-2010).
Current research in music technology includes how human-computer interaction and software can be used in performance and composition. Our drama research includes work with the renowned dance theatre choreographer, Jasmin Vardimon (Visiting Professor of Performance 2010 - 2012), as well as publications and practice in a wide range of subjects including one on one performances, composing music-theatre and theatre and science. Research in dance includes work on dance history, including German expressionism, and a major new work on Martha Graham. The Dance department also has a world renowned specialism in Dance Science.
11 Supporting your career
Supporting your career At the School of Performing Arts, we have many years’ experience in supporting our students in pursuing their career ambitions. We believe our formula for success is working: with increasing student satisfaction; increased graduate employment rates; and more graduates than ever pursuing successful careers in the arts. Here’s how:
Work-based modules & performance practice
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Business start-up opportunities
+ Work experience & placements
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Your creativity & ambition
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A highly employable graduate
Supporting your career 12
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Charlotte Gilpin, 2013
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The lecturers have really diverse interests and experience and have excellent contacts in the Music industry which are really important if you are planning to establish a music career.
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The variety of content in the dance course has given me the skills and confidence I need for my future career. Emma Morgan, 2014 graduate
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My knowledge of musical theatre has vastly improved, and the lecturers were very inspirational. They gave guidance, encouragement and support. Despite believing this would be my highest qualification, it has motivated me in such a way that I am looking at a Master’s.
Dale Phillips, Popular Music
On our Dance courses, work-based modules in your second year to help prepare you for final year work placements. You can choose your own placement, usually from the professional dance, education and health sectors, and this often influences future career plans and employment. We work closely with The Arena Theatre and other local companies who provide placements and work experience. Musical Theatre students have plenty of opportunities to work with professional companies, composers and practitioners. Whilst projects in the second and third year focus on the business skills required to create theatre in the 21st century. Drama students may choose to teach in a secondary school as part of a module in second year, then base their final project on jobs such as teacher, scenographer, performer, director or writer. As a final year Music student, you will deliver group projects focused on education and music business activity, including production and performance work. Music Technology students have used departmental links to work at festivals and in recording facilities both in the UK and abroad. Why not be your own boss? Enterprise and entrepreneurship are hugely important to the creative disciplines and the University’s SPEED programme assists students and graduates to set up a new business and begin trading – with great success.
13 Student successes
Student successes We are proud to produce graduates who are skilled, creative performing arts practitioners who can critically reflect on, and interlink theory and practice.
Make a dream come true Rebecca Namgauds, first class honours graduate in Dance, has been very active in the Birmingham dance scene since graduating, broadening her horizons by taking a series of professional classes and workshops nationally and internationally. She celebrating the showing of her choreographic work Severed Dreams in London at the Cloud Dance Festival 2013. Rebecca was also a dancer at the festival, performing with the West Midlands Rutherford Dance Company. Reflecting on her studies, Rebecca says of her course: “Work-based learning dance modules, as well as studio-based modules, gave me the skills and knowledge I am now using as a professional dance artist within performance, devising work and also managing myself and my time.”
Speeding ahead with stage school success MA Drama graduate Rachel Hardway always had a dream of opening her own stage school, and with the help of the SPEED Plus business start-up project, her dream has become a reality. Support from the project allowed Rachel to launch Breakout Performing Arts, teaching children from 3-16 years old to sing, dance and act. All classes take place in the University’s Performance Hub on Walsall Campus, University of Wolverhampton. Rachel says: “I’ve created a business plan for the future of Breakout Performing Arts and will soon be expanding the school shop – setting up more classes and looking to introduce franchises of Breakout Performing Arts across the UK and abroad. SPEED Plus has definitely given me a great starting point and I now feel confident in following through my ideas for expansion.”
Student successes 14
Session success leads to Abbey Road Andrew Cooksey, BA (Hons) Music and Popular Music, 2001 graduate has been a successful session player with bands across the country, playing in West End theatre in the UK and on European tours.
“My studies were a while ago, but taught me the most important thing is to learn how to push yourself. Be independent, never wait to be handed anything, work hard to become good enough to do what you want to do.
He now works at Abbey Road Studios for Chris Egan Music, playing guitar and working on orchestration and composition.
“I just really enjoyed the entire experience at the University of Wolverhampton. Of being in an environment where you can spend all of your time immersed in music, improving your skills so you can hopefully build yourself a career in the future.”
“The best part of the job for me is the great variety. After years of playing shows, which can become repetitive, it’s nice to be able to do everything I’ve trained in on film, TV and theatre projects.
15 Honouring the trailblazers
Honouring the trailblazers
Each year the University awards honorary degrees to a select number of people who have demonstrated outstanding achievement or distinction in their field.
David Bintley CBE Honorary Degree of Doctor of Philosophy David Bintley completed his training at the Royal Ballet School before joining Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet. An outstanding character dancer, from 1986 to 1993 Bintley moved from resident choreographer for Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet to the same post at Covent Garden before working freelance around the world. In 1995 he was appointed director of Birmingham Royal Ballet and from 2010 took on the additional role of artistic director of the National Ballet of Japan.
Image courtesy of Richard Battye
His varied canon of work includes Flowers of the Forest (1985), Still Life at the Penguin Café (1988), Tombeaux (1993), The Shakespeare Suite and The Orpheus Suite. His re-workings include Hobson’s Choice (1989) and Cyrano (2007), Edward II (1995) and his Arthur cycle (2000-2001). His ballet E=mc2 won the last ever South Bank Dance award in 2009, and his new version of Cinderella was screened on BBC2 and BBC4 as the 2010 Christmas ballet.
How to apply 16
Join us
How to apply Undergraduate applications
Applications for full-time undergraduate BA (Hons), FdA and HND programmes are usually made through UCAS – the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. Visit: ucas.com
Undergraduate entry requirements • 220 UCAS points for Drama, Musical Theatre and Music courses and 240 UCAS points for Dance and Dance Joint courses. • Dance, Drama, Musical Theatre and Creative Theatre Technologies offers are subject to an interview and a practical audition. • Music performance courses are subject to an interview, practical audition and successful completion of a theory test. • Music Technology and Sound Production courses are subject to an interview (including portfolio recordings) and an aptitude test. • Applications from mature candidates (over 21) are welcomed, subject to the same conditions.
Postgraduate and part-time applications You can apply online for all postgraduate and part-time undergraduate courses. Simply find the course you wish to apply for at: wlv.ac.uk to see full entry requirements, then follow the link to ‘apply directly’.
International students International students can apply either through UCAS or the International Centre. For further information or an application form please tel: +44 (0)1902 322 735, or email: international@wlv.ac.uk
Finance For information regarding financing your studies, contact our Higher Education Advisors, tel: 01902 321 032 or email: gateway@wlv.ac.uk
Fees For the most up-to-date information on our tuition fees please visit: wlv.ac.uk/fees
Scholarships
The University of Wolverhampton offers a range of scholarships to help support you with your studies. To see if you could qualify, please visit: wlv.ac.uk/scholarships
School of Performing Arts The Performance Hub Walsall Campus Gorway Road Walsall WS1 3BD Tel: 01902 322 058 Email: perform@wlv.ac.uk Visit: wlv.ac.uk/performingarts Follow us: Twitter: @WLV_Arts Facebook: /WLVArts MAC2115