Looking for a great dance college in California.?

Question:Hi, i'm a junior in high school and i'm hoping to major in dance in college before going to NY to audition for Broadway shows. I have a very strong background in Jazz and Ballet with some Modern training and i'm also in the competition circuit. The college i'm looking for must have a good jazz program, and hopefully it would be in California around the LA area so I can commute easily to auditions in tinseltown.

Currently i'm really interested in Chapman University, so if anybody has firsthand experience with their dance program, some background on the college would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance for answers!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Hi, i'm a junior in high school and i'm hoping to major in dance in college before going to NY to audition for Broadway shows. I have a very strong background in Jazz and Ballet with some Modern training and i'm also in the competition circuit. The college i'm looking for must have a good jazz program, and hopefully it would be in California around the LA area so I can commute easily to auditions in tinseltown.

Currently i'm really interested in Chapman University, so if anybody has firsthand experience with their dance program, some background on the college would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance for answers!

Hi. First I'd like to commend you for doing such a great job in describing your dance background and what you're looking for in a college dance program. In my years of "advising" high school dancers like yourself, I find few who do this. Most just say, "What are the best college dance programs?" and that's it.

Next, I'd like to thank you for introducing me to the dance program at Chapman University. I've just spent quite a bit of time reading up on it and it does sound interesting - at least on paper. I've been researching college dance programs since my daughter was a high school freshmen in 2001. (She's now a senior BFA dance major and I continue researching programs as a kind of hobby.) Her background was a lot like yours and she also wished to find a school with a strong jazz component - something very few dance programs have. Essentially, she wanted a very strong, triple-emphasis program. Until now, I didn't know any such programs existed in California.

However, it's not just me who is ignorant about Chapman's dance program. I looked to see if it was mentioned in any past discussion threads on collegeconfidential.com,
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/
(one of the best college-search forums on the internet) and the one post asking for feedback on the dance program, there, was never answered. The same person also sought feedback on "Ballet Talk for Dancers"
http://dancers.invisionzone.com/index.ph...
(the largest forum for discussing dance education) and, again, no one responded. Whether or not this tells you anything, I don't know.

In googling "Chapman dance" to see if anything was mentioned anywhere else, I came across this local article:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/...
The girl who is featured in the story is on Facebook, so you might want to send her a message. My daughter made use of MySpace this way to solicit first-hand information from current college dance majors and it worked very well.

Based on what you wrote about yourself and what you're looking for, I can't argue that Chapman sounds like a very good fit, especially in terms of it being near LA. My first reaction was that your expectation that you'll have time to do outside auditions might be unrealistic. For all of the other BFA programs that I know, not only is there not time to do any outside work beyond Nutcracker gigs, but the programs often have policies that forbid outside dance commitments. But in looking at Chapman's program (on paper), my sense is that it doesn't contain as much dancing as other BFA programs. Only 52% of the 124 credits needed for graduation are dance and dance-related credits. The reduced amount of dance credits is reflected in fewer hours in the studio: only two days a week of 1.5 hours sessions for each class. There are also less performances offered each year. Part of this seems related to having only three dance studios to work in, which limits how much time can be spent on all the wonderful offerings in Chapman's program. All of the other triple-emphasis programs that my daughter looked at offered much more: more studios, more dance time, more dance credits required compared to academic requirements, more performances.

By all means, go fully check out Chapman. There's a Student Spotlight performance coming up on January 25th that you should try to see.
http://chapman.edu/dance/
You're also the right year in school to ask about arranging to take some classes. But I'd also like to highly recommend that you check out the dance program at the University of Arizona.
http://web.cfa.arizona.edu/dance/index.p...

The UofA only offers a BFA in dance; no BA. Which means that you'd know from Day 1 that you're part of a BFA program (unlike Chapman). At UofA, 64% of the 125 total credits are School of Dance requirements. What's more, you're free to load up your schedule with extra dance classes at no extra cost. Full-time tuition is set at anything over 11 credits per semester. And speaking of costs, everything at UofA is almost half the costs of Chapman's for out-of-state students. Keep that in mind when thinking about that girl's scholarship (mentioned in the article). With the same level of financial aid/ scholarships at UofA, you could save about $30K over the course of four years. With that money, you could fly to LA for important auditions, if you'd like.

By fully comparing the two programs, I think you could make a much better decision about Chapman. Good luck, and feel free to email me for more thoughts.