From Blog Director Jill Randall:

This fall, we have invited masters programs around the country to share some of the details about their program offerings and application deadlines. The blog is pleased to be a hub of information, including about graduate study.

Today, I looked back through the 100+ artist profiles from the past few years, specifically looking for perspectives on graduate studies. Pulling from eight artists' stories, you will read here about different paths and timelines for graduate school. Some artists waited 15 years to attend school; others started graduate school shortly after completing a bachelors degree. 

Daniel Charon

Daniel Charon - MFA CalArts

Graduate school proved to be a very important stage for my artistic development. I think it was really valuable to do this later in my career, after I had worked professionally for about 17 years. It really served as a time of growth where I was able to put my needs and desires first. This was different than dancing with a company where I put my main energy toward the organizations I was working with. It came at a good time in my career journey as well, after I had freelanced for a couple of years. I really saw it as a retreat and a time to concentrate and question my own work and what I was trying to say. It was wonderful to not have the distractions of the run around in New York. It felt like a stepped out of my real life and entered a time of reflection.

Colleen Thomas - MFA University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, low residency program

UWM was the perfect place for a returning professional like myself. At 34 years old I was the average age for my class at UWM. I was scared to death to go back to school, but honestly, I’m usually scared to death before I do anything new! I met some of my most admired friends at UWM. I met strong, successful performers who were interested in exploring more dimensions in this career. I was dancing professionally and had a few adjunct jobs. UWM’s program directors Ed Burgess and Janet Lilly knew how to guide me and really inspired the next phase of my life. I worked alongside highly successful artists (innovators still in the field) and exchanged and collaborated with amazing peers and faculty. 

Colleen Thomas

Nina Haft - MFA University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, low residency program

My 30s: I left AXIS Dance Company after a great 10 year run. Kept dancing and choreographing my own work and committed more seriously to being an artist. I began teaching dance technique, and that radically infused my own dancing and performing and choreography with new questions and energy. I started Nina Haft & Company when I was 37. The next year, I went back to graduate school. It was the only way I could think of to spend more time choreographing.

Gwen Welliver - MFA Bennington College

I wanted to concentrate exclusively on my own work. I went to Bennington College and entered the MFA program. This was a magical time. It took two years of improvising for me to figure out where I was. To my mentors: Terry Creach, Dana Reitz, Susan Sgorbati, and Michael Giannitti. I’m still enjoying the momentum I gained from this period of study. 

Graham Brown - MFA University of Maryland

On one hand, grad school was the ticket to eligibility for a faculty position, which I knew I wanted. On the other hand, there were many things I wanted to work on, too many to reasonably sink my teeth into in three years. Specifically I wanted to:

• develop as a choreographer
• build more tools as a teacher, particularly in areas other than improv
• further my pursuits as a scholar (I haven’t talked about this, but by then I had published a few little things and was interested in going further into dance scholarship)
• develop stronger technical and performance skills
• gain skills in theatre
• maintain a foot in the professional world, particularly through performance

I knew this was too much, so I entered grad school ready to see which areas my program would most facilitate. To a certain degree I actually did have experience and development in all of these areas, but choreography became by far my most intense area of focus. Specifically I had the unique opportunity to work within the theatric modalities I was interested, as the UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies put me in direct collaboration with top tier professors and grad students in design, stage management, and dramaturgy, as well as offering faculty mentors in both Theatre and Dance.

Cynthia Oliver - MA New York University; PhD New York University

I didn’t set out to get a PhD. I came to a crossroads in my career. I had achieved my high school dream of dancing with a company (companies) and touring the world early and quickly. I had traveled a lot by my late 20s and suddenly I thought, “Is this it?” So I started searching for other interests. I was going to try arts management. I thought being in front of the curtain would assist behind the scenes. I took a position as manager of Urban Bush for a year. While I made lifetime friends with Jawole and others in the group, it was not an area I was interested in pursuing. I went into an interdisciplinary program at NYU’s Gallatin School and started along a path that led me to Performance Studies, where I found my passion. I went on to a PhD because as I was defending my Masters Thesis I was literally thinking…”I haven’t mastered anything!” SO I kept going and here I am 12 years out from having defended and now am considered a senior professor. Time is funny. My dissertation was a study of pageantry and black womanhood in the Caribbean. I used beauty pageants – which are plentiful in the region, as a means to discuss gender, nation, sexual and economic politics in the history and present of the US Virgin Islands. It also related to the excavations I had been doing choreographically throughout my career – that of exploring women’s worlds, always somehow anchored within Caribbean traditions and practices even if not overtly so. 

Abby Zbikowski - MFA Ohio State University 

The first 5 years after college: This was a rough chunk of time that I would rather not return to, while at the same time it was full of definitive moments for me in my career. For three of the five years in question I was living in Philadelphia, teaching dance part time in a public high school in NJ, working as a home health aide, trying to make work/find places for it to be seen, and lastly trying to be a performer. At the end of those three years, I realized that work (occupation), which has always been a necessity and priority in my life, was not allowing me to really dig deep and seriously pursue choreography. I decided to apply to graduate school to carve out a distinct time and space to really dive into all this information around me I had accrued through the years. The last 2 years of my five years after college graduation were spent at Ohio State University absorbing and exploring and experimenting as much as possible. My first year I was awarded a University Fellowship to attend, then was given a Graduate Associate position teaching major and non-major courses. 

Katie Faulkner        Photo: Adam Shemper

Katie Faulkner - MFA Mills College

The first 5 years post-college: I didn’t study dance as an undergraduate. I chose, instead, to study Theater & Playwrighting, a path I fell into accidentally after being utterly floored and inspired by a playwrighting teacher. After school, I fumbled around for several years enlivened by my theater training but with no real desire to fashion a career as a playwright. I worked in several service industry jobs and non-profit organizations in entry-level positions. I moved back home to NC to raise money and regroup and wound up taking classes back at my home studio. It was there that I rediscovered my love and hunger for dance and the particular community it provides. Soon thereafter, I decided to apply to Mills College in Oakland, CA for graduate school to study dance more rigorously. I entered graduate school 3 years after finishing my BA to pursue a two year Performance & Choreography MFA.

—————-