Colleges that offer a great dance program.?

Question:

Colleges that offer a great dance program.?

iahve two years to go still but i want to pursue a career in dance education....teaching dance

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: For the purposes of teaching dance, the choices of really good college dance programs would be too numerous to mention. You many not even have to go out of state. Your best resource would be purchase a copy of Dance Magazine's College Guide:
http://www.dancemagazine.com/college_gui...
It contains a listing of almost all the college dance programs in the U.S. and many others from other countries. It then goes further to show if concentrations are available within each program. In your case, you'd mostly want to look for programs that allow you to concentrate in dance pedagogy or education.

As you may know, the field of teaching dance rarely requires a college degree. In fact, most ballet studios are probably going to want to see a teaching certificate from one of the ballet organizations such as the R.A.D., Cecchetti, etc. It's only in K-12 public schools that you must have a college degree and be certified to teach. However, I agree that pursuing a dance education career by completing a college dance program is the best way to go because you'd also be getting a valuable college education.

Therefore, you first need to consider what you'd like to teach and in what setting. If you mostly want ballet, then you'd need to look for programs that lean that way. If you'd like to learn all the basic styles (including jazz and tap), then you're going to have to look a bit harder, as fewer programs offer those styles. Most dance programs are a fairly even mix of ballet and modern.

Next, it really helps to have a program that will place you in student teaching positions through an actual pedagogy concentration. You can certainly learn plenty of dance in a program that emphasizes performance, but in those programs, you wouldn't get any actual teaching experience.

Finally, you'll need to consider what kind of college you'd like to attend. Schools such as Point Park University, Marymount Manhattan and the University of the Arts are great dance programs that offer ballet, modern and jazz PLUS dance education, but none of them have a campus. They're all smack dab in the center of major cities (Pittsburgh, NYC and Philadelphia), with the school buildings right next door to office buildings.

It's never too early to start looking around at college dance programs, in my opinion. (My daughter started in 9th grade.) You should actually start with the programs that are driving distance from where you live. It doesn't mean that you have to seriously consider going to them, but you should definitely be going to all their dance concerts and taking tours of their facilities. This way, you can get some idea of what appeals to you and what doesn't in making up a list of pros and cons. Maybe big performance venues are important to you, or maybe you realize that you must have a program with its own pilates equipment.

Just asking for "great dance program" recommendations isn't really going to help you - ESPECIALLY on Yahoo Answers* - because your factors for what makes a great program are going to different. However, once you start narrowing your list, then definitely start asking around about how people feel about those dance programs. It's also great to talk to the dance majors at those schools, as they can also say why they picked that program over others.
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*For example, SUNY Cortland has no dance major whatsoever, only minors in music and musical theatre, and SUNY Fredonia does not offer any pedagogy classes in their dance program. I have never heard those schools mentioned in connection with dance. Also, the Lehman School of Performing Arts is a dance studio and Dancer is 12 years old.