MA Choreography and Professional Practice Degree

Program Overview

The MA Choreography and Professional Practices program at the University of Brighton equips students for careers in choreography, performing arts, and dance research. Students benefit from industry connections, performance opportunities, and opportunities to conduct independent research projects. The program prepares graduates for careers in choreography, dance development, arts administration, performance, teaching, and doctoral studies.

Program Outline

Or are you interested in a postgraduate course to prepare you for further study such as a PhD or professionally-related qualification? This MA Choreography and Professional Practices course explores choreography, improvisation, devising and experimentation, professional and artistic development, and portfolio working. You will have opportunities to network with industry professionals and improve your portfolio as you study. You will be challenged to explore your practice and examine you working methods as a dance-maker. This course will introduce you to choreographic research methods and strategies for documenting live performance practice and promoting your work. You will have opportunities to pursue live performance practices as a choreographer, consider your work in relation to the wider field of professional contemporary dance practice, develop your artistic voice and explore single discipline or interdisciplinary practice-based projects involving choreography, performance, fine art, music, and installation. You will lead projects and focus on topics that interest you in performance making as you explore and expand on your existing choreographic practice in a dynamic research environment. You will examine innovative and experimental approaches to choreographic practice, research and scholarship and discover topics including choreographic practices and methods of research, somatic approaches, developing movement vocabularies, collaboration, devising and experimentation. Staff work in a range of fields including dance theatre, new media and dance film, site-specific and installation work. On this course you will:

• Work alongside nationally and internationally renowned arts researchers including Yael Flexer, Abi Mortimer, Carrie Whitaker, Detta Howe, Ann Nugent, Virginia Farman, Victoria Hunter and Cathy Childs.
• Access the lively arts research culture at the University, including: regular programmes of research presentations given by staff, web-based learning, research students and visiting artists/researchers.
• Attend performances by visiting artists/companies, theatre trips to performance events, and arts research training events and national arts conferences.
• Develop your marketing, fundraising and ‘pitching’ and presentation skills.
• Collaborate with independent researchers and students from accompanying courses including MA Performance: Dance.
• Study twice-weekly technique classes.
• Complete an independent research project on a topic relevant to the field of choreography.
• Explore innovative and experimental articulations, dissemination of dance knowledge and applications of dance across a range of contexts and media.
• Learn from experienced guest lecturers – past guest lecturers have included practitioners and curators including Gary Clarke, Kerri Nichols, Hagit Bar, Liz Aggis, Didy Veldman and dramaturge Lou Cope.
• Be able to take part in Continuing Professional Development opportunities.

Outline:

This course is made up of core and optional modules. Each module is worth a certain number of credits. To complete the course at MA level you will need to gain 180 credits at Level 7. This list is indicative and subject to change.

Modules:

• Artist As Producer: You will undertake initial research into a range of contemporary dance and performance related platforms, festivals, projects and artist-development schemes both within the UK and in European or international contexts.
You will develop an articulation of your work and practice through the development of a website resource that includes a distinctive artist’s ‘statement’.
• Body in Site: In this module, you will consider approaches to, and the implications of, site-dance.
A range of site-specific dance, movement installation, perambulatory performance and durational approaches will be explored through practical experiments and theoretical study. the module will explore how the moving body relates to site and will explore a range of socio-political and cultural theory through which body-site relationships can be considered.
• Choreographic Practices: A practical module delivered in the studio.
You will develop your own compositional practice and experiment with new working methodologies and strategies for making work. You will observe professional choreographers making work with mapdance, our professional performance programme company.
• Dance Writing and Criticism: The module will be based around the in-depth viewing and analysis of selected mainly contemporary dance works live and on video.
It will look at approaches to theoretically applied forms of writing for different readerships and publications, emphasising approaches that are descriptive, interpretive, analytical and evaluative, or positioned within a post-structuralist perspective.
• Dissertation: The dissertation is the culmination of your postgraduate study.
You will develop a substantial dance research project of your choice. You can choose to include a varying amount of dance practice alongside written critical commentary.
• New Media and Performance Practices: This module explores the relationship between new medias and dance performance practices.
Using various software programs in tutor-facilitated sessions, you will practically explore the programs for use either as a creative medium or for documentation/dissemination purposes and will practice their skills through exercises using the software. You will also develop your practical skills with the software through the design and production of either a creative work using digital media, a documentation package suitable to the work you choose to document, or other means of disseminating research via digital interfaces such as Internet.
• Pedagogical Approaches: Through a combination of lectures, seminars and practical tasks, you will analyse, deconstruct and reconstruct technical exercises and phrases in order to build a critical base of teaching material.
Planning, phrase construction and giving corrections will be explored in the context of somatic development and consideration of issues relating to health and safety. You will also be expected to undertake critical analysis and evaluation of professional dance classes. You will be introduced to lesson planning, devising schemes of work appropriate to different teaching situations such as primary and secondary syllabus work, special needs and working with the elderly and community-based groups.
• Performing Politics: In this module, you will analyse a wide range of dance practices: historical and contemporary, popular and ‘high art’, Western and non-Western.
You will consider these in relation to twentieth- and twenty-first-century debates about the politics of the body, for example: the roll of the body in mass culture; the extent to which the body is controlled by or resistance to the state; the roll of the body in colonisation and decolonisation; the roll of the body in negotiating local, national and global identities; the roll of the body in constructing sexual and gender identities; the relationship between the body and technology.
• Philosophy and Aesthetics: In this theoretical module you will explore how knowledge about dance is rooted in philosophical and aesthetic ideologies, from both historicised and contemporary perspectives.
You will look through a wide lens at dance and its evolving beliefs, with the main focus on dance as art, and contemporary dance.
• Repertory: This practical module is an opportunity to work on the creation or re-staging of a repertoire work.
Dancing in the construction or reconstruction of a work of repertory provides you with opportunities to extend creative practical skills in dance performance. You will apply your choreographic knowledge and performance skills to devising and problem-solving within select frameworks linked to research processes (practical and contextual) underpinning the repertory. You will engage with choreographic devising and performance as an independent group or as part of the MA company MapDance. To study this module you must also select Techniques for Performance.
• Techniques for Performance: This module will include daily technical training to develop your interpretive and presentational skills in preparation for performance.
You will explore motion complexity, qualitative interpretation, musicality, alignment, flexibility, core strength, and stamina as you develop the technical skills you will need as a professional dancer.

Assessment:

You will study through theoretical and practical workshops, lectures, seminars and rehearsals. You will be assessed through a range of assignments depending on which modes of study choose. All modules are assessed through programme work in the form of practical choreography presentations, essays, reports, presentations, learning journals, portfolios, online tasks and group working. During your independent research project you are supported through seminar sessions and tutorials as you develop the research skills essential for lifelong learning, career flexibility, and for personal and professional development.

Teaching:

• You will study through theoretical and practical workshops, lectures, seminars and rehearsals.
• You will be assessed through a range of assignments depending on which modes of study choose.
• All modules are assessed through programme work in the form of practical choreography presentations, essays, reports, presentations, learning journals, portfolios, online tasks and group working.
• During your independent research project you are supported through seminar sessions and tutorials as you develop the research skills essential for lifelong learning, career flexibility, and for personal and professional development.

Careers:

This MA Choreography and Professional Practices degree will prepare you for a range of careers in industry or you may choose to continue your studies and apply for a PhD or other professionally-related qualifications. You could pursue a career in:

• Choreography
• Performing arts
• Dance development
• Arts administration
• Performance
• Teaching
• Dance research

Other:

Some this course content may be delivered on campus and in off-site venues in Brighton, London and other regional venues. You need to be flexible and prepared to travel and manage your time well to make the most of this opportunity. You will need to pay your own travel costs.