What Styles and Courses Can Students Study in the UW Department of Dance?

The University of Washington Department of Dance teaches a deliberately broad range of movement traditions rather than a single technique. According to the department's own description, its courses span contemporary ballet, modern dance, street styles, and West African dance, and the curriculum is built to balance creative work with academic study. If you are trying to judge whether your training background or interests fit the program, the four style areas above are the clearest starting point, and the department's courses page is where the full list lives.

The four style areas named by the department

The department frames its course offerings as "courses that will move you," and specifically names these traditions:

• Contemporary ballet — ballet technique taught through a contemporary lens rather than a strictly classical syllabus.
• Modern dance — a core concert-dance tradition, consistent with the department's identity as an artist-scholar community.
• Street styles — hip-hop and related vernacular forms, which place the program beyond a purely concert-dance conservatory model.
• West African — a specific named tradition, indicating the curriculum includes non-Western movement practices as regular coursework rather than one-off workshops.

The phrasing "we immerse our students in diverse traditions and techniques" signals that these are treated as ongoing areas of study, not electives bolted onto a ballet-or-modern core.

How creative work and academic study fit together

The department describes "a rigorous balance between creative work and academic study." In practice this means the program is not only studio training:

• Creative work covers dance-making, performance, and original work — the department's events include concerts "that showcase original work."
• Academic study covers the scholarly side of the field, supported by faculty research. The site lists research areas such as Juliet McMains's work on tango and on femininity and female empowerment in commercial dance, alongside projects by Paul Moore and Lisa Kwak.

This combination matters if you want a degree that treats dance as "a field of study and a living art form" — the department's own words — rather than purely vocational technique training.

Degree and program options to match against your goals

The styles above are delivered through several programs, so the right entry point depends on what you want:

The MFA has its own application cycle — the site lists an "Apply to the UW MFA in Dance" deadline of November 1, 2026 — so prospective graduate students should treat that as a separate planning timeline from undergraduate admission.

Ways to test the fit before committing

The department runs public-facing opportunities that let you sample the teaching without enrolling:

• Concerts showcasing original student and department work.
• Masterclasses with visiting artists — the site describes taking a masterclass with "a world-renowned visiting artist."
• Events such as the Dance Graduate Student Research Symposium (listed for October 14, 2026, 12:30–2:30pm at Jones Playhouse, 4045 University Way).

Attending one of these is the most direct way to see whether the technique mix and the creative/academic balance match how you actually want to train.

Where to get the definitive course list

The homepage only summarizes the style range. For the actual catalog of classes — levels, sequencing, and prerequisites — go to the department's courses page (linked from the main navigation as "View Courses"). That page, not the homepage, is the reliable source for deciding whether specific offerings line up with your background.

One practical note: the site does not publish tuition, fees, or audition requirements in the material available here, so those details need to be confirmed directly with the department or the university's admissions pages rather than inferred from the program descriptions.