Degree offered: MFA

Website: http://dance.uiowa.edu/graduate-program

Audition and application deadlines:

Application deadline: Friday, December 4, 2017 (always the first Friday in December).

Audition dates: Monday, January 29, 2018 and Tuesday, January 30, 2018 OR Wednesday, February 7, 2018 and Thursday, February 8, 2018 (by invitation).

Average age range of the masters students: Varies, from 23–53

Average length of time it takes to complete the program:

The program is typically completed in 2 years. There is flexibility depending on individual plans of study to extend the program to 2.5 or 3 years. 

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Jennifer Kayle, professor: 

http://blog.lifeasamoderndancer.com/2014/02/artist-profile-55-jennifer-kayle-iowa-city-iowa.html

Mo Miner, MFA graduate: 

http://dancingwords.typepad.com/life_as_a_modern_dancer/2013/03/artist-profile-27-mo-miner-oakland-ca.html

Ellie Goudie-Averill, MFA graduate: 

http://dancingwords.typepad.com/life_as_a_modern_dancer/2015/01/artist-profile-83-ellie-goudie-averill-iowa-city-ia-1.html

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Drawing on canonical and emerging frameworks in Dance, our creative and scholarly research represents diverse aesthetics and viewpoints, and promotes investigation of a wide range of contemporary issues facing dance-makers, performers, and artistic citizens. With a holistic view toward intellectual and embodied inquiry, we bridge teaching and research, theory and practice, and training and scholarship throughout the program. Graduate students are given the prompts and the space to explore compelling questions that focus on performance, creative process, and form. Other questions help to situate dance practice via theoretical and historical frameworks, including that of dance as social praxis, confronting issues of identity, culture, power, and social justice. Extensive mentoring exists in a rich collaborative environment, offering graduate students multiple spheres of engagement, experimentation, and advising. Each course, independent project or study is approached as a practical laboratory, and often as collaborative research between peers, and between faculty and grads. The outcomes take several forms, including traditional scholarship, as well as 8 or more fully produced productions per year (shared concerts with faculty, thesis concerts, an interdisciplinary Collaborative Performance concert, and self-produced Grad Events). Other opportunities include collaborations with the prestigious International Writers Program, and the 24 + 24 collaboration with composers from the Center for New Music.

Each graduate student community (typically 12 students total) comes from a diversity of geographic, aesthetic, and ethnic backgrounds. While in the program, they make their home in a small city with a vibrant arts community, and a sizable international population. Our frequent consideration of global perspectives is prompted by our community, but also by our view that dance, as a way of knowing and being in the world, is far bigger than any single aesthetic or urban epicenter, and exists along a horizontal spectrum of diverse people and practices.

The 60-credit MFA degree program offers two degree emphases: Choreography and Performance. These two emphases share a core curriculum, but allow for specialization and flexibility to support emerging interests. Candidates receive funding with fellowship awards, teaching assistantships, and research assistantships that pay for tuition, health insurance, and also provide a stipend.

The curriculum includes advanced-level studies in choreography and performance, contemporary techniques in modern and ballet, dance history and theory, pedagogy and teaching practica, improvisation, kinesiology, collaborative performance, digital arts including "Installations & Interactive Performance," "Producing and Directing Digital Video," "Video for Performance," and somatic practices such as Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Method, a 200 hour Yoga Certification program, and world dance forms such as Brazilian Culture and Carnival. 

A few of our graduates include:

• Jenna Riegel (Bill T. Jones)
• Edward Rice (3rd Rail – Then She Fell, and other productions)
• Tony Orrico (Trisha Brown, Shen Wei, and now his own work – a hybrid of movement/durational performance, installation, drawing: http://tonyorrico.com/ )
• Joanna Rosenthal (Artistic Director, Same Planet Different World: http://www.spdwdance.org/#)
• Simone Ferro (Chair, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)

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