Performing Arts

Performing Arts

The Master of Fine Arts Program in Dance in the Performing Arts Department at Washington University offers an innovative approach to dance technique, composition, improvisation and production. It involves an energetic interplay of studio work with professionally distinguished dance instructors, seminars with faculty who are experts in their fields and independent studies in choreography. This two-year program will expand your dance skills while engaging you with current concepts of dance as an art form, as an expression of culture and identity, and as a mode of critical thinking.

The Master’s Program in Theater and Performance Studies introduces students to cutting-edge scholarship in the dynamic field of theater and performance studies, preparing them to pursue academic careers as scholar-practitioners.  Offering a broad-based approach to the study of performance, this two-year program expands a traditional focus on aesthetic practice to include cultural performances such as gender performativity, Civil Rights activism, early modern surgery, slave auctions, and begging.  Under this broad umbrella, students are invited to explore the mutual engagement of aesthetic and cultural performance practices across history, around the globe, and between disciplines, drawing on a variety of theoretical approaches to illuminate the complex meanings generated by and through performance.