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Dance Student Resources

Discover everything you need to thrive as a student in the Department of Dance!

Welcome to the Department of Dance’s student resources page! Here, you’ll find essential resources, student organization information and support to enhance your educational journey. Explore the resources available to help you succeed and thrive in your dance studies!

Dance Student Organizations

There are many student organizations at UNC Charlotte available for all students to join. Range of Motion and MOVE Dance Alliance are two that work closely with the Department of Dance to share rehearsal and performance space. Both organizations produce their own performances and end-of-semester showcases, giving students the opportunity to choreograph and perform.

Range of Motion Dance Ensemble

Faculty Advisor: Ashley L. Tate | President: Coral Hatch | Instagram: @rom_uncc

Range of Motion Dance Ensemble (ROM) is a student-run organization that was created in 2013. The movement concept “Range of Motion” refers to how your body extends through space; therefore, the purpose of ROM is to create a positive environment for individuals to further their artistry while extending and sharing their passion for dance. ROM supplements the Department of Dance curriculum by focusing on commercial dance styles.

Learn more about ROM

MOVE Dance Alliance

Faculty Advisor: Marissa Nesbit | President: Aliyah March | Instagram: @movedance_clt

MOVE Dance Alliance is an organization that gives students a chance to choreograph and perform every semester in a professional dance showcase. They are open to dancers of all different backgrounds and levels and allow their members to have full artistic freedom in creating and performing their own dance works. In addition to their showcase, they also hold various workshops that help members establish meaningful relationships with one another and help strengthen the dance community.

Learn more about MOVE

Support Resources

If you need classroom support, have questions about a classroom topic or approach, or have witnessed something in class you’d like to speak about, the course instructor is a highly recommended first point of contact. If you cannot approach the instructor, you may consider communicating with the department chair or production director as a facilitator. See more resources, below.

Student Assistance and Support Services

The Office of Student Affairs: Student Assistance and Support Services (SASS) assists, supports and advocates for students experiencing a broad range of issues, concerns, or challenges interfering with a student’s ability to be successful academically or personally. This includes absence verification, basic needs, emergency housing, food insecurity, student complaints, student emergency fund, tuition, housing and dining appeals, withdrawal and incomplete grade requests.

Office of Civil Rights & Title IX

You can report incidents of sexual and interpersonal misconduct, as well as incidents of discrimination and harassment to the Office of Civil Rights & Title IX. This office takes active measures to create or restore a respectful, safe and inclusive environment for community members that is free from discrimination, discriminatory harassment, and sexual or interpersonal violence. Title IX reports also connect students with appropriate resources (i.e. SASS, Dean of Students, chair, etc.)

Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS)

The primary goal of Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) is to provide comprehensive wellness-related programs and services to students. CAPS offers individual and group counseling, crisis assistance, consultation, referrals, outreach and online training.

Dance Career Preparation & Resources

University Career Center

Within the Department of Dance, career preparation is highly prioritized and integrated into the curriculum. Students have access to a wide variety of career development tools and resources throughout their educational program, continuing into their status as alumni. Dance actively partners with the Career Center to support students in their career preparation through career coaching, experiential learning, employer engagement and much more!

Visit the Career Center

As a student at UNC Charlotte, it is never too early to begin focusing on your professional development as you prepare for your career after graduation. Review the top career skills acquired in this degree program, student experiential learning and career outcomes and career development resources.

Career Skill Development

In the Dance Department, students gain valuable career skills that help prepare them for life after graduation. These are the specific career skills learned in the Dance program:

  • Leadership – Dance students gain leadership skills through participating in rehearsal, performance, and production experiences. There are many additional opportunities to build leadership abilities, such as working directly with the chair of the department by serving on the Student Advisory Committee.
  • Critical Thinking – Coursework in Dance integrates theory with practice, providing students with problem solving skills and the ability to contextualize information. Faculty include students in their research projects, further developing critical thinking skills.
  • Teamwork – Dance performances require groups of individuals to work together for a common goal, leading students in our program to develop extensive collaborative skills.
  • Communication – Through varied coursework that includes writing, speaking, creating dances, and performing, students in Dance gain the ability to convey ideas and information, and to express themselves.   
  • Professionalism – Dance students work as course preceptors and production assistants, participate in internships, travel to conferences and festivals, teach classes and workshops, and produce their own research and choreography. These opportunities develop students’ abilities to present themselves in professional environments.
  • Engaging Across Perspectives – Students in our program learn dance forms and practices from a variety of cultures. As they work with faculty and other students from various perspectives and areas of expertise, they gain experience interacting and communicating with others both like and unlike themselves.

Data & Student Success

Access data on experiential learning and post-graduation career success of students studying in this department.

Dance Career Resources
Career Center Resources

In addition to your academic department, the Career Center provides valuable career development resources to assist you in developing your professional brand and prepare you for purposeful work.

The Career Center is located in Atkins Annex, next to the main Atkins Library. Students can utilize Career Center Drop-In Hours, Monday-Friday from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m., to get their quick questions answered and get connected with careers information.

Student Learning Outcomes

The Department of Dance at UNC Charlotte offers a diverse, open-access curriculum and awards Bachelor of Arts degrees and certificates. Through our commitments to creative practice, inquiry, performance, pedagogy, inclusivity, cultural awareness, and community engagement, we aspire to develop dance professionals and dance-aware citizens, to help build UNC Charlotte’s identity as an urban research university, and to hold a unique place among dance programs nationally.

Students will demonstrate proficiency in… 

SLO 1: Creative Practice and Inquiry (covering all modes of communication, including written and oral communication skills 

Knowledges / Ways of Knowing / Habits of Mind and Body 

Students will be able to 

  • Generate ideas through the following: exploration (physical, technological, and/or aural); analysis of and response to existing works of art and scholarship; and in relationship to political and social ideas and environments. 
  • Compose ideas into communications (performed, written, oral) that are structurally, aesthetically, and intellectually sound and sensitive to diverse communities. 
  • Express and communicate evidence, ideas and opinions through clear and cogent writing. 
  • Think critically, exploring generated ideas in relationship to desired aesthetic and social/cultural outcomes. 
  • Re-enter creative and inquiry processes to deepen understanding and improve communication. 
  • Self-reflect, exploring encounters with self, disciplines, personal practices, creative and academic work, communities, and environments. 
  • Develop an introductory knowledge of writing for dance: self-reflection, critique, and proposal writing. 

SLO 2: Bodily and Performance Practices 

Knowledges / Ways of Knowing / Habits of Mind and Body 

Students will be able to 

  • Apply knowledge of anatomy and somatics practices to dance practice. 
  • Demonstrate skills related to diverse dance genres/styles. 
  • Identify and list terms and histories related to movement practices. 
  • Integrate theory and practice, understanding meanings made through movement to build consciousness around choice-making, and understanding how movement makes meaning, and even THAT movement makes meaning. We can’t do or show something in our bodies without it being seen and interpreted by others. 
  • Demonstrate nuanced understanding of aesthetic and expressive qualities appropriate to dance techniques and choreographed works. 
  • Demonstrate corporeally the contextual knowledge and resistive possibilities encoded withing the body by accessing multiple anthropological (hula, samba, etc.) and activist (krumping) potentialities of movement in choreography or pedagogical exercises. 

SLO 3: Pedagogical Skills 

Knowledges / Ways of Knowing / Habits of Mind and Body 

Students will be able to 

  • Conceive and create effective dance classroom sessions and other dance experiences that include clear, relevant learning objectives, appropriate, effective assessment methods, and comprehensive, engaging learning plans. 
  • Skillfully facilitate sessions with K-12 students and/or community members in classroom and performance settings and in the field. 

SLO 4: Professional and Leadership Skills 

Knowledges / Ways of Knowing / Habits of Mind and Body 

Students will be able to 

  • Develop knowledge of diverse choreographic, musical, historical, and intellectual dance practices and “texts.” 
  • Think and work across areas of knowledge and practice. 
  • Develop the habits of self-education and lifelong learning, especially by regularly reading and attending arts events. 
  • Strengthen self-discipline, organizational skills, and confidence. 
  • Display abilities to work independently and in collaboration with others. 
  • Strengthen interpersonal skills, including the capacity for problem solving, conflict resolution, and inter-generational and multi-cultural communication. 
  • Demonstrate appropriate professional habits: be on time, work with energy and commitment, invest in personal rehearsal and reflection, display leadership skills and community-engagement by helping others. 
  • Prepare for graduate-level study and/or jobs in dance professions through internships, independent projects, or by participating in a faculty-led research project. 

SLO 5: Community Building and Cultural Awareness Competencies 

Knowledges / Ways of Knowing / Habits of Mind and Body 

Students will be able to 

  • Demonstrate intercultural and multicultural awareness. 
  • Develop an introductory knowledge of theories that impact understandings of individuals (identity) and communities (representations). 
  • Demonstrate self-reflection and sensitivity to diverse communities and peoples and apply them across dance experiences 

Technology & Resources

The CoA+A is committed to keeping you connected and equipped with the right tools essential for your educational success in an ever-evolving digital landscape. Learn more about technology and resources.

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