To study dance at CalArts means being part of a one-of-a-kind creative community, working in a dynamic environment that fosters collaboration, experimentation, and creative connections with talented peers from music, theater, film, interactive media, and other artistic disciplines.
Comprehensive BFA and MFA programs build high-level proficiencies in performance technique, choreography, dance production technologies, and critical understanding of the art form—all within a cultural context that can be performed anywhere in the world.
CalArts’s dance programs offer ample creative exchange and collaboration between professionally motivated students and a faculty of practicing artists. Students develop their individuality and creativity as artists who specialize in using the body as a space for exploration.
Viewed as young professionals, they produce a concentrated season of aesthetically diverse work each semester. Class work includes guidance on performing and choreographing for stage, nontraditional spaces, social media, commercials, filming, editing, photography, writing business plans, advice on creating a company, and developing each individuals artistic mission.
The School's performance calendar includes over 40 performance opportunities featuring esteemed repertory and work by guest artists, faculty, and students each year. These concerts include the Open House Dance Concert, the BFA II Solo Dance Concert, the Winter Dance Concert, Intermission, the MFA Thesis concerts, the Spring Dance Concert, performances in Los Angeles art spaces, and more.
Over 25 guest artists are welcomed each year for classes, setting repertory, workshops, and giving lectures. Along with guest artists, we have artists-in-residence that engage with students while making work at CalArts.
Various opportunities to study abroad and engage in international dialogue are available to dance students in places such as London, Zurich, Seoul, Paris, and Taipei.
This rigorous schedule provides students with regular performance opportunities and engagement with professional artists, which in turn support the development of highly skilled dance artists and inspire larger ways to think about what dance truly is.