Submitted by Kris Bain on September 24, 2015 - 10:10am
Students interested in dance classes at the UW may have a hard time choosing. There’s ballet and modern, jazz and tap, salsa and cross-cultural studies…the list goes on.
It wasn’t always this way.
Fifty years ago, students had two choices: ballet in the School of Drama and modern dance through Physical & Health Education. There was no dedicated unit for the study of dance until 1965, when a Dance division was established in the School of Drama (later moving to the School of Music). The Dance Program finally gained autonomy in 1988, with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program added two years later.