Dance careers typically don’t final without end—many dancers even transition into second careers throughout or after their years onstage. As a result of Level Park College acknowledges this actuality, it’s making ready its college students for the various chapters of their dance journeys, beginning with the primary day they step on campus in Pittsburgh.
To that finish, Level Park is now providing a bevy of superior levels that Conservatory of Performing Arts college students can pursue whereas concurrently finishing their levels in dance:
For undergraduate dancers with a ardour for training, Level Park is now additionally providing a BA in Dance Training Certification for preK by twelfth grade. All the grasp’s packages supply an accelerated schedule, permitting college students to graduate with two levels in simply 4 and a half years.
“These packages are proof that our dancers are desperate to translate their data throughout totally different mediums, and to be a part of various kinds of skilled communities,” says Colleen Hooper, affiliate professor of dance and coordinator of dance training. “It should create extra alternatives for them.”
Study extra about how these three areas of research can profit dance college students, and the way Level Park’s school is popping the perfect of what the college has to supply into bespoke alternatives that may additional dancers’ careers—now and sooner or later.
Dance + Enterprise
Greater than 20 years in the past, Level Park created a program inside its MBA focus in Sports activities, Arts, and Leisure Administration to deliver Conservatory alumni again to campus to finish an MBA following their efficiency careers. “What we discovered could be very few college students, if any, truly got here again,” says Stephen Tanzilli, the dean of Level Park’s Rowland Faculty of Enterprise. “They go on, they begin their lives, and so they transfer on. Figuring out what we all know, we thought the easiest way to go about it was to supply the alternatives up entrance.”
That is the genesis of the brand new BFA + MBA. After expressing curiosity of their sophomore 12 months, college students begin taking MBA courses in between their junior and senior years, with each on-line and in-person choices. After graduating with their BFA, college students can transfer out of Pittsburgh and full their ultimate MBA semester remotely—a super selection for dancers keen to leap into performing alternatives.
Whereas Tanzilli hopes that some graduates of the joint program will go on to work in arts administration, he says that the talents they’ll be taught of their MBA programs will serve them irrespective of the place their careers take them. “I need them to go comply with their desires, however allow us to give them that enterprise ability set, as a result of they’re going to be their very own enterprise. They’re going to have to grasp insurance coverage and mental property and the best way to shield themselves and pay their payments.” At a current open home for potential dance college students, Tanzilli met two households occupied with Level Park due to the brand new MBA choice. “That is the primary program of its sort within the nation,” he says. “And that’s what we’re making an attempt to do right here: to be modern and dynamic in all that we do.”
Dance + Public Relations, Promoting, and Social Media
Given the explosion of dance on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, and the rise in dancers utilizing these platforms to advertise themselves, it looks as if a pure match for Level Park to supply its dance college students the possibility to pursue an MA in Public Relations, Promoting, and Social Media. Says Jenna Lo Castro, an affiliate professor and the director of Level Park’s Faculty of Communication graduate packages: “The programs appeared like one thing that college students have been simply naturally occupied with. From an expert perspective, but additionally college students have been occupied with the way you construct and maintain a private model within the dance area.”
College students within the MA program select between two concentrations: Public Relations and Promoting, or Social Media. As with the MBA, they begin their graduate coursework between their junior and senior years and may full this system—which is totally digital—after ending their undergraduate levels.
“It prepares college students to work on each company and model sides, and in content material creation or influencer content material,” says Lo Castro. “Graduating college students have gone on to work in something from a standard company setting to company communications, disaster administration, and occasion planning and promotion.” Lo Castro hopes that the diploma will achieve traction with dance college students as a result of it’s dynamic, responding to the business in actual time. “Individuals who go into dance, their trajectory isn’t linear,” she says. “That is offering these college students with further instruments to assist them succeed of their careers.”
Dance + Training
Dance and instructing typically go hand in hand, and numerous dancers train in some unspecified time in the future throughout their careers, whether or not they’ve deliberate to or not. “I feel it’s actually giving weight to the truth that instructing is a big a part of the dance area,” says Hooper of Level Park’s new academic diploma pairings. Inside the Grasp of Training (MEd), there are two choices: A certification to show preK by fourth grade in all topics, and a dance-education–particular certification to show preK by twelfth grade. The latter choice is made potential by Pennsylvania’s new dance-education certification, which Hooper says has been many a long time within the making.
Each grasp’s packages might be accomplished totally on-line beginning the summer season after sophomore 12 months. The one in-person element is a student-teaching requirement, half of which must be accomplished in Pennsylvania and half of which might be finished in one other state. Hooper says that many college students decide to do the primary half in Might and June, instantly following their April BFA commencement, earlier than shifting out of state.
After creating the MEd in Dance Training certification, Level Park added a 3rd choice for dancers occupied with instructing, sans a sophisticated diploma: the undergraduate BA in Dance Training with certification for preK by twelfth grade. “We realized that some college students might wish to pursue careers as dance educators, and so they might already know that coming into their time on the conservatory,” says Hooper. “This may permit them to finish all the program inside 4 years, get their instructing certification, and likewise proceed coaching at a extremely excessive stage.” Like BFA dancers, BA college students nonetheless must audition for this system, and are eligible for a similar efficiency alternatives as their friends.
Hooper believes that each one of those degree-pairing choices—in training; enterprise; and public relations, promoting, and social media—will give dancers a leg up after commencement. “It makes me really feel nice that we will supply dancers totally different choices for his or her careers that may assist them at a spread of junctures,” she says. “It’s not simply in regards to the day you graduate, but additionally the years after. How are you going to have a profession in dance your total life?”
For extra info on Level Park College’s degree-pairing packages for dancers, click on right here.
