I am having trouble finding any information about dance at Vanderbilt. There are links to a dance program website that seem to be almost 10 years old. I know they don’t have an actual program, but looking for where to find out about clubs, classes and performance opportunities. Or anyone willing to share recent personal experience. Thank you!
One option…the VandyDanceTeam is a D1A team that competes at the NDA College Nationals in April. The team holds a few clinics each year, including usually one in February. Auditions are usually in mid-April.
That’s the reason my son took Vandy out of the running. No dance opportunity. His final group included Wake, Elon, and William and Mary because he could dance at any of those.
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I think there is some club level dance. This is all I could find. A bit older. A Dancer’s Guide to Vanderbilt | Inside 'Dores | Vanderbilt University
There is no ballet or classical dance , just dance team which leans more cheer-type /competition jazz and isn’t classical. The lack of options in dance (specifically ballet) is one of the main reasons Vanderbilt did not even make the let’s-take-a-tour cut for D23. We toured 23 and she applied to 16. Great school—we toured with D21 & she loved it—but not for D23 because of the lack of dance. D23 didn’t want BFA or any of that, just intellectually rigorous with ballet on campus or within consortium, and close to/in a city if possible. I dont know where you and kid are in the process of making a list but mine found that looking at clubs helped (ballet is a club at Upenn and at the other schools that made the final consideration—usually one can google them and look on insta to see what they do each season). The dance factor makes the search so hard—good luck!
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DD is a 23 grad and not thrilled with the dance at her school. She is a pre-pro trained ballet dancer that also loves contemporary, modern, jazz, hip hop. Her SLAC has a major, but class offerings are so limited, she is on dance team but it isn’t meeting her need. She is also a math/stem focus so needs a strong stem school.
Beware of just relying on school pages and class offerings- she found that very few classes in the catalog actually exist.
She is considering transferring- so it will be even that much more difficult.
The old Vandy info that comes up on google looks like it used to have strong options.
A good friend’s daughter is having an excellent experience in modern dance at Emory. I think she’s double majoring in dance and political science.
Yes, mine did 12 yrs in a school attached to a professional ballet company. In addition to UPenn, maybe look into Swarthmore, Columbia, Uchicago, Duke, WashU, Wake? They definitely all have current classical ballet and contemporary dance options, have former pre-pro dancers there, etc. All have excellent Stem, plus Wake has a dance minor that would fit with stem major, which makes it more structured than the undergraduate -run companies with college facility support &studios with marley but no department. The latter 2 would be the slightly easier one to transfer into as they typically take more transfers —others might be very tough as they take very few second yr transfers compared to Vandy/washU /wake.
My oldest is a junior at Vandy and is a dancer as well. Dance is a student activity at Vanderbilt. There are a lot of opportunities to dance and be involved with dance, but it is not at the level of a college dance department. Many of the clubs have social media, so that you can get an idea of the dance that is happening and where you might fit. Some of the dance orgs that I am familiar with through my daughter are: Vibe, Vitality, Tap That, VU point, Momentum - there are others as well. My kiddo is a hip hop, modern and tap dancer. She performs very often. She is in one dance company that does 1 or 2 shows/year, and is also involved in the tap company, where she has taught as well as taken classes and performed. There are many other opportunities through the various companies and other orgs to perform throughout the year. (At least monthly), She typically dances 3-4x/week, and is very happy with that level of involvement. She did not intend to be a dance major. She is majoring in English and secondary education with a minor in theater. She also took a dance pedagogy course as an independant study with a small group of dancers. Happy to answer any other questions that I can.
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Sorry - posted in the wrong spot: [quote=“dfinefish, post:9, topic:3655043, full:true”]
My oldest is a junior at Vandy and is a dancer as well. Dance is a student activity at Vanderbilt. There are a lot of opportunities to dance and be involved with dance, but it is not at the level of a college dance department. Many of the clubs have social media, so that you can get an idea of the dance that is happening and where you might fit. Some of the dance orgs that I am familiar with through my daughter are: Vibe, Vitality, Tap That, VU point, Momentum - there are others as well. My kiddo is a hip hop, modern and tap dancer. She performs very often. She is in one dance company that does 1 or 2 shows/year, and is also involved in the tap company, where she has taught as well as taken classes and performed. There are many other opportunities through the various companies and other orgs to perform throughout the year. (At least monthly), She typically dances 3-4x/week, and is very happy with that level of involvement. She did not intend to be a dance major. She is majoring in English and secondary education with a minor in theater. She also took a dance pedagogy course as an independant study with a small group of dancers. Happy to answer any other questions that I can.
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