Courses

Dance Program education and training includes half-credit courses focused on technique and performance across a variety of dance forms. We also offer a holistic range of full credit courses that explore the creative process of making dances in specific contexts, and that integrate movement-based inquiry with scholarly discourse on dance and embodied knowledge across arts and non-arts disciplines. A maximum total of four course credits (made up of partial credit courses) in technique and performance courses may count toward the thirty-four courses required for graduation from Duke. If you need special accommodations with your course schedule or course load in order to take a technique or a performance class, see the DANCE 280 overview or Performance Contract option.

Professionals/community members and non-Duke university students may also register for Duke Dance Program courses.

To see courses offered during a specific semester, please visit DukeHub and select “Class Search”.

Select from the following menus to filter the table.
Number Title Codes
DANCE 89S First-Year Seminar
DANCE 101 Introduction to Dance CCI, ALP
DANCE 105S Dance Composition R, ALP
DANCE 110 Elementary Modern Dance
DANCE 116 Alexander Technique for Musicians, Dancers, and Actors ALP
DANCE 120 Beginning Ballet
DANCE 122 Intermediate Ballet
DANCE 125S American Musicals ALP
DANCE 130 African Dance Technique I
DANCE 131 Capoeira: Brazilian Dance/Martial Art
DANCE 135 Experimental Sculpture and Installation Art ALP
DANCE 140 Jazz Dance I
DANCE 142 Hip Hop I
DANCE 143 Hip Hop II
DANCE 152 Dance Improvisation
DANCE 190FS Focus Program Special Topics
DANCE 199FS Knowing Through Performance R, W, ALP, SS
DANCE 201S Arts Entrepreneurship ALP
DANCE 202 Arts Policy, Leadership, and Engagement EI, R, SS
DANCE 203A The Arts, Culture, and Performance of New York CCI, ALP
DANCE 205A Internship in New York
DANCE 205S Advanced Dance Composition R, ALP
DANCE 210 Intermediate Modern Dance
DANCE 211 Musical Theater Workshop: Performance ALP
DANCE 219S Production Management for Theater ALP
DANCE 225S Ballet Forces: Dancing the State CCI, EI, W, ALP, CZ
DANCE 226S Performing African Diaspora CCI, W, ALP
DANCE 229 Stage Management CCI, ALP
DANCE 230 African Dance Technique II
DANCE 233S Performing Brazil CCI, ALP
DANCE 235SL Capoeira: Practice and Culture CCI, W, ALP, SS
DANCE 240 Jazz Dance II
DANCE 243 Tap Dance Technique ALP
DANCE 251AS Duke in London: Arts CCI, ALP
DANCE 276S Lighting Design R, ALP
DANCE 280 Individual Dance Program: Special Topics
DANCE 284 Ritual, Performance, and Religion CCI, ALP, CZ
DANCE 290 Special Topics Lecture
DANCE 290A Special Topics in Dance Duke-Administered Study Abroad
DANCE 290S Special Topics Seminar
DANCE 301 Arts Activism & Everyday Technology ALP
DANCE 302S Writing about Performance CCI, R, W, ALP
DANCE 306S Dance for the Camera R, STS, ALP
DANCE 307S Dance Film: Documentary Aesthetics in Dance-Moving Image Practice CCI, ALP
DANCE 308 Performance and Technology: Composition Workshop STS, ALP
DANCE 309S Dancing States of Mind: The Self, Social and Political Practice of Dance R, ALP
DANCE 310 Advanced Modern Dance
DANCE 316S Unique Approaches to Dance Choreography CCI, ALP
DANCE 317 The Body in Art in Early Modern Europe: Power and Limits of Corporeal Representations CCI, ALP, CZ
DANCE 318S Movement in Question: Introduction to Critical Dance Studies CCI, R, W, ALP, CZ
DANCE 320 Advanced Ballet
DANCE 321 Pointe and Variations: Advanced Study of Pointe Work for Ballet
DANCE 325S The Black Parades: African Diaspora Parade Culture and Radical Resistance CCI, ALP, SS
DANCE 335SL West African Rootholds in Dance CCI, ALP, CZ
DANCE 336 Black Dance CCI, R, W, ALP
DANCE 337S Black Dance: Jamaican Contexts ALP, CZ
DANCE 338S Ballet History: Black Presence CCI, ALP
DANCE 347S The Moving and Sounding Body CCI, ALP
DANCE 356 Dance and Dance Theater of Asia CCI, ALP, CZ
DANCE 368 Gender in Dance and Theatre CCI, ALP, CZ
DANCE 370S The Choreographic Mind: Order, Disorder, Organization, Relations CCI, R, ALP, CZ
DANCE 371 Artists in Healthcare: Collaborations and Complexities CCI, EI, R, ALP, CZ
DANCE 375 Music for Dancers ALP
DANCE 390 Special Topics
DANCE 390S Special Topics
DANCE 391 Independent Study
DANCE 393 Research Independent Study R
DANCE 394 Research Independent Study R
DANCE 403S Pedagogies of Dance ALP
DANCE 410 Intensive Modern Dance
DANCE 412 Performance: Modern ALP
DANCE 420 Intensive Ballet
DANCE 422 Performance: Ballet ALP
DANCE 432 Performance: African ALP
DANCE 435 Experimental Sculpture and Installation Art ALP
DANCE 442 Performance: Jazz ALP
DANCE 443 Performance: Tap ALP
DANCE 444 Performance: Hip Hop ALP
DANCE 452 Performance: Contemporary Chinese Dance in the Diaspora CCI, ALP
DANCE 462 The Performance and Practice of Speculative Human Order ALP
DANCE 472 Performance: Dance Theater ALP
DANCE 482 Social Justice Choreography EI, ALP
DANCE 487S Capstone Seminar: Research Methods in Dance Studies and Choreographic Performance CCI, R, W, ALP, CZ
DANCE 489T Capstone: Senior Project R, ALP
DANCE 490S Special Topics in Dance
DANCE 499S Capstone Seminar: Distinction Project R, ALP
DANCE 561S Art as Work: Valuing Labor in the Arts CCI, EI, R, ALP, CZ
DANCE 571S Philosophy in Motion: Corporeality, Gesture, and Movement in Modern Thought CCI, R, W, ALP
DANCE 575S Somatics: Embodiment for the Twenty-First Century EI, R, ALP, NS
DANCE 590S Topics in Dance/Embodiment
DANCE 665S Contemporary Dance History CCI, W, ALP, CZ
DANCE 690S Special Topics in Dance
DANCE 701S Choreographic Praxis: Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change
DANCE 703S Pedagogies of Dance
DANCE 707S Dance Film: Documentary Aesthetics in Dance-Moving Image Practice
DANCE 710L Movement Research I
DANCE 762S The Creation, Performance, and Practice of Speculative Human Order
DANCE 771S Graduate Seminar: Theories of Corporeality
DANCE 782 Social Justice Choreography
DANCE 787S Research Methods in Dance
DANCE 790S Special Topics in Dance/Performance Praxis
DANCE 793S MFA Proseminar: Professional Practices
DANCE 801S Establishing a Choreographic Practice
DANCE 810L Movement Research II
DANCE 891 Independent Study
DANCE 971S Critique
DANCE 989 Thesis Project - MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis