The dance major offered at Keene State College is anything but what it seems.
Looking at it from the outside, it seems that all the dancers do is dance. However, there is much more that goes into the theatre and dance program.
“The structure is sort of a traditional lecture course, but we find we are preferring to teach our history courses with much more conversation, much more student participation. We try to get some movement in there,” William Seigh, a dance professor at KSC, said about the dance history courses.
Seigh has been teaching at KSC for the last 15 years and has been dancing since the early 1970s.
The dance major at KSC focuses on several aspects according to both Seigh and Marcia Murdock, the dance program director and professor.
Dance majors are to focus on dance education, choreography, dance technique and dance history.
Murdock said that if a dance student decides to focus on dance education, they will receive two degrees: one in education (grades K-12) and one in dance.
Murdock primarily teaches the education portions of the major but she also teaches the ISP (Integrative Studies Program—KSC’s general education requirement) courses.
Sarah Brovitz / Equinox Staff
Both Murdock and Seigh, who also teaches some ISP dance courses, said they do not teach the ISP courses with non-dance majors too much differently than classes for the major.
Murdock said she just incorporates a few extra cues when teaching non-majors.
Margaret Leary, a senior at KSC, is majoring in dance.
Leary has been dancing since she was two-years-old and said her favorite type of dance is modern.
She said she knew she wanted to major in dance when she “blew out” her knee and was not able to dance for six months.
There is no audition process to become a dance major, according to Leary, but there are scholarships that the program gives out to the most deserving students. Leary had received this scholarship her freshman year and has kept it throughout her four years at Keene State.
Although most dance courses offered here at KSC are primarily physical, majors still have to take history and theory classes.
“Most of the classes are hands on. Your whole time here is spent doing half technique and half composition classes.” Leary said. The homework for the physical classes generally consists of rehearsing and perfecting what was taught in the previous class, according to Leary.
However, the history and composition classes are more like classes of common majors. They require little physical activity and have the dance students write papers. Murdock said in her classes, she requires the students to write three “short” papers.
“For our technique classes we have to write about dance. We usually write about shows that are at the Redfern or we do self evaluations on our comp[osition] assignments,” she said. “There is a lot of writing about dance specifically. As the four years progress, you learn to talk and write about dance articulately. Like any other major or profession, you build as you grow with the program.”
The main difference between the dance major and minor is that the dance major requires 51 credits where the minor only requires 20 credits.
Lynsey Beatrice is a junior at KSC and is a dance minor. Her favorite style of dance is modern, but she said she has “always been a sucker for tap.”
Beatrice is a French education major. She said she did not want to major in dance because she did not want her body to restrict her.
“I always knew I wanted to do something with dance, but I knew I didn’t want to major in it. My sister at the time was a sophomore in college and she was going to a performing arts school in Chicago for dance and she hurt herself really badly and she was not able to dance,” Beatrice said.
“So that kind of gave me a wake-up call. I’ve always been prone to injuries. I actually came in freshman year pretty hurt.”
Like the major, there is no audition requirement for the minor. Beatrice said she simply met with Seigh and told him she wanted to minor in dance.
He then helped her pick classes and signed her up, according to Beatrice.
When asked if there was a difference between the major and minor, Beatrice said she did not think there was much of a difference other than the credits.
“There is because there [are] a lot more classes that you have to take, but I feel like I am really involved in the dance program as a minor,” she explained.
“You interact with the same people and you’re in the same classes as them,” Beatrice said.
The dance major at KSC focuses on modern dance techniques.
According to a Huffington Post article entitled “What the Heck Is Modern Dance,” modern dance is compared to ballet but uses a lot more torso movements and requires a lot of strength and agility.
The dance program here at KSC is combined with the theatre program as well. Murdock refers to it as an “umbrella” major. She said she hopes it will one day be able to stand alone. Because the two majors are connected, they require students to integrate both sets of classes. For instance, dance majors are required to take acting and theatre classes. “We’re really well rounded here,” Leary said.
Shannon Flynn can be contacted at sflynn@keene-equinox.com