Dance BA (Hons)
Why choose this course?
If you want to study dance and performance practically, but also want to gain an understanding of their history and the current dance industry, this is the course for you. No matter what your dance experience and background is, this course enables you to experiment and explore your creative potential, preparing you for a career in the dance or creative arts industries.
You'll develop your own dance identity by studying a variety of topics, such as choreography, dance technique and performance, and the dance industry, with a particular focus on teaching dance or event management.
The course is forward-thinking and emphasises the importance of equality, diversity and inclusion that makes the dance industry a vibrant and exciting place to work. There are opportunities to undertake a work placement or professional project or collaborate across disciplines (such as with a composer or filmmaker).
You'll work in a range of workshops and technique classes, across a range of dance and performance styles, for example:
- hip hop dance styles
- African
- classical Indian dance
- contemporary dance and contact improvisation
Throughout the three years you will gain a valuable insight into the dance industry through the Dance Industry modules, which prepare you for employment after graduating.
There is the option to specialise in choreography or Hip Hop and Urban Performance Practices in Years 2 and 3, and work as a dance company in Year 3.
The course also capitalises on London's vibrant multicultural dance scene, enabling you to access well-known dance centres such as Sadler's Wells, the South Bank Centre, the Barbican and the Place.
Check out what we are up to on our Kingston Uni Dance Instagram.
| Attendance | UCAS code/apply | Year of entry |
|---|---|---|
| 3 years full time | W500 | 2023 |
| 6 years part time | Apply direct to the University | 2023 |
| Location | Penrhyn Road |
Reasons to choose Kingston
- The University's brand new Town House has a performance studio theatre and three large dance studios, equipped to professional standards with fully-sprung floors, mirrors and barres.
- 100% of students from this course were in employment or further study within six months of graduating (DLHE 2016/17).
- You'll learn from real-life dance companies. There are guest workshops and in-house residencies from the likes of the Olivier Award-winning Botis Seva and Far From the Norm, What is Written? Dance Company, Adriano Olivera (African) and Paradigmz (Dance Hall).
The Art School Experience
As part of Kingston School of Art, students on this course benefit from joining a creative community where collaborative working and critical practice are encouraged.
Our workshops and studios are open to all disciplines, enabling students and staff to work together, share ideas and explore multi-disciplinary making.
Gallery of student work
What you will study
By the time you graduate you'll have gained real-life experience and skills of what it is linked to working in the dance industry and completed projects that will help kick-start your career. You will do this through learning, making, performing, watching, and discussing dances in new ways, using eye-opening perspectives and developing your professional and employability skills.
As you progress, you will work on projects that draw together different strands of your learning. Across the three years of the course, you will have increasing independence in the design and delivery of these projects.
Year 1
Year 2
Optional Year
Year 3
Year 1 focuses on developing your skills, knowledge and understanding. You will be introduced to the dance industry and set a plan for what you need to do to support your career aspirations. You will develop your technical and performance skills in a range of dance styles and apply this to your choreographic work. dance technique and knowledge of. You will also learn about the history of dance, anatomy and dance training.
Core modules
Dance Techniques and Cultures 1
60 credits
This module provides students with the opportunity to further develop their technical and performance skills through engagement with learning, developing, refining and performance of dance techniques from contrasting styles (such as hip hop and contemporary dance styles). Students will learn through intensive practical classes led by professionals in the field, accompanied by seminars to support their ability to critically reflect on their development. There will be regular opportunities to present their work, experimenting with a variety of communication technologies and reaching multiple audiences.
The intensive technical training offered in this module will allow students to expand their vocabulary and increase their fitness level and movement dynamics, working with more challenging and advanced material. Students will continue to engage in reflective practice for personal and professional development. By proposing an integrated approach that blends technical and performance training with an understanding of the role that context and perspective play in shaping and communicating movement, the module aims to equip students with practical tools to become sector leaders and cultural advocates for dance.
Creating Dance 1
30 credits
This module is designed to develop students' knowledge and understanding of a diverse and inclusive range of fundamental choreograph tools, devices, structures and practices to enable them to create, and perform short choreographic works and start to envision their artistic voice. This module will draw from a diverse range of dance styles and directly encourage students to be adaptable and draw from a range of dance techniques within their practice. Students will be encouraged to use improvisation as a practice for risk taking and developing ideas and exploring a range of source material for performances, such as, visual art, current affairs and music. Reference will be made to the historical development of choreographic practice as well as current choreographic trends and draws on the work of practitioners to enable students to contextualise their work. Students will be encouraged to develop self-practice and independence through the exploration of frameworks analysing movement, reflective practice in the choreographic studio and models for self and peer feedback.
Dance Industry 1: professional skills and personal development
30 credits
This module is designed to help students develop key knowledge and understanding of professional pathways within the dance sector. It will offer opportunities to engage with leading industry professionals through case studies to facilitate an in-depth understanding of professional practices and global contextual challenges. Emphasis will be placed on recognising the roles of who might be stakeholders in the 21st century dance industry, for example, audiences, funders, participants, and venues, and the importance of having a personal and professional narrative in communicating ideas and outcomes.
Year 2, provides you with the opportunities to apply your skills, knowledge and understanding developed in year 1 to the development of projects. Alongside developing your dance technique you will have the opportunity to develop your teaching skills or gain an insight into producing and managing events completing group projects. You will also learn about theoretical frameworks that will help you develop your understanding of the dance industry today and have the opportunity to specialise in either choreography or Hip Hop and Urban performance practices.
Core modules
Dance Industry 2: teaching and producing pathways
30 credits
This module enables students to build on knowledge and understanding of professional pathways within the dance sector explored through prior learning with a particular focus on working in participatory, for example community dance and dance in education settings, producing production settings. It will provide opportunities for students to specialise through two distinct pathways but both interrelated; working as a teacher in a range of participatory settings, including formal education and community contexts. Or, as a producer working in the arts sector. Both pathways examining the synergies between the two employment opportunities. Emphasis will be placed on how the two employment pathways can support the development of the dance and arts sector and the opportunities to become a local, national and global leader within these contexts. During the first teaching block students will select their chosen pathway of either teaching or producing.
Dance Techniques and Cultures 2
30 credits
This module provides students with the opportunity to further develop their technical and performance skills through engagement with learning, developing, refining and performance of dance techniques from contrasting styles (e.g. Hip Hop and contemporary dance styles). Students will learn through intensive practical classes led by professionals in the field, accompanied by seminars to support their ability to critically reflect on their development. There will be regular opportunities to present their work, experimenting with a variety of communication technologies and reaching multiple audiences.
Dance and the Global Now
30 credits
This module offers students key frameworks and embodied application to develop a comprehensive understanding of dance in an interconnected world, reflecting on the relationship between the local and global dimensions of current movement practices. This includes exploring and critically evaluating the possibilities and formats of dance in a rapidly changing world and engaging with topical issues that relate to historical, social, pollical and cultural contexts, such as the climate crisis, interculturalism, difference, migration and gentrification. The module supports the development of critical, analytical and embodied knowledge of a range of movement-based creative practices through classroom-based and practical workshops. For example, the application of dance to social contexts, site-specific and popular dance performance and the experimentation with urban and hybrid movement vocabularies. It also covers the role of dance in the context of activist and socio-political practices, and of the changing relationships between dance and its audiences through practice-based exploration and application.
Optional modules
Creating Dance 2
30 credits
This module will further develop core compositional techniques encouraging students to develop a more sophisticated and experimental approach to the development of their own choreographic practice with particular emphasis on choreographing on groups of dancers and working in different contexts e.g. site-specific contexts. This module will explore a diverse range of movement styles and vocabularies from practitioners refining the acquisition of social, political and historical understanding of choreographic contexts. This module encourages students to develop contextual awareness of practitioners, such as Alesandra Seutin to Kate Prince, Botis Seva to Benoit Swan Pouffer, to situate and locate their own practices with.
Hip Hop and Urban Performance Practices 1
30 credits
This module offers students the opportunity to gain valuable practical experience of black dance practices, such as hip hop, afrobeats and dancehall, and to develop skills in articulating the artistic and sociopolitical relevance of these practices. Through a combination of practical and theoretical learning the module lays a foundation for students to develop necessary skills and knowledge to become critically aware, articulate and accomplished practitioners. This includes working in the private commercial and public arts sectors as choreographers, dancers, teachers, producers and researchers.
You have the option to take an additional year to study abroad.
The focus of Year 3 is about preparing you for graduation and opportunities to work independently and lead your own projects. You will have the opportunity to undertake a placement or develop your own industry-based project, work as a member of a Dance Company with a choreographer and tailor the rest of your study to your own interests.
Core modules
Dance industry 3: placement and professional skills
30 credits
This module is designed to prepare students for graduation and employment as future leaders within the global dance and arts sector. It enables students to personalise their learning and development through leading a project or undertaking a placement. These opportunities will develop their professional identity they explored through prior learning.
Dance Company
30 credits
This is a practical module designed to take students through the process of making a dance production, from initial conception to final performance whilst also further developing and applying advanced levels of dance techniques and dance training. The focus of the module is to provide students with the experience of being in a dance company and of working closely within professional contexts of training, creating, refining and consolidating final production pieces suitable for professional performance environments. Students will apply ideas and creative problem-solving skills acquired through prior learning, in more diverse performance settings. Students will work in company environments with their choreographer both in scheduled learning time and during independent study hours to create, rehearse and produce full-scale dance-based productions. Students will work in companies led by a module tutor with choreographic experience. The companies will be set by timetabled classes.
Optional modules
Independent Dance Project
30 credits
This module is designed to offer students the opportunity to engage with key ideas, questions and approaches in dance scholarship and practice, and to apply them to the development of an independent dance project conducted under supervision. The project can draw from any aspect of learning from across the course and will support students with developing their research, analytical, problem solving, critical thinking and communication skills. The project outputs can consist of applied research and practice, practice-research or textual/written research. Students will be guided to employ and develop knowledge and skills to complete a project on an agreed topic. For example, topics could be related to dance theory, history, performance and choreography, (auto-) ethnography, pedagogy, educational or participatory dance, or industry.
Creating Dance 3
30 credits
This module provides student with the opportunities to experiment, innovate and develop choreographic outputs for context of their choice. It will enable students to further develop artistic leadership skills, communication skills and organisational skills within a collaborative environment to produce a creative output. Moreover, the module enables students to draw on all aspects and disciplines explored throughout prior learning to support students' emerging professional identities as future leaders and dance artists who could work in the dance, participatory, and related arts sectors. It will support students to further develop their choreographic skills and leadership for creating work for specific communities and contexts that have relevance to the wider global world. At the end of the module students will present a performance/creative output such as a live performance, installation or video performance reflecting their aspirations for future choreographic work upon graduation. Students will be offered tutorials at the beginning of teaching block two to support the selection of their chosen pathway. Collaboration with dancers and practitioners in other art forms will be encouraged. To further develop students' professional identities, they will develop a portfolio of their creative work and critical evaluations of the influences on their creative practice.
Hip Hop and Urban Performance Practices 2
30 credits
This module offers students a focused practical and contextual engagement with black dance practices, such as hip hop, afrobeats and dancehall. Students will develop skills in articulating the artistic and sociopolitical relevance of black performance practices through reflective discussion of their own work. The module enables students to refine dance skills and further develop embodied knowledge relevant to this sector. This focus helps in building the attributes required for the students to become articulate entrepreneurs and socially-aware pioneers in the dance industry. This includes working in the private commercial and public arts sectors as choreographers, dancers, teachers, producers and researchers.
Please note
Optional modules only run if there is enough demand. If we have an insufficient number of students interested in an optional module, that module will not be offered for this course.
Future Skills
Embedded within every course curriculum and throughout the whole Kingston experience, Future Skills will play a role in shaping you to become a future-proof graduate, providing you with the skills most valued by employers such as problem-solving, digital competency, and adaptability.
As you progress through your degree, you'll learn to navigate, explore and apply these graduate skills, learning to demonstrate and articulate to employers how future skills give you the edge.
At Kingston University, we're not just keeping up with change, we're creating it.
Entry requirements
Teaching and assessment
Timetabled learning and teaching on this course includes technique classes, workshops, choreographic labs, lectures, small group tutorials, seminars, and group work.
Who teaches this course?
You will be taught by a team of leading industry professionals and academics who have trained at or been employed by some of the world's leading artists, companies and academic institutions including: New Adventures, Richard Alston Dance Company, Trinity Laban, Greenwich Dance, Rosie Kay Dance Company, Akademi and London Contemporary Dance School. You will also work with dance artist and companies through guest workshops and in-house residencies.
Facilities
Dance is based in the University's flagship building, the Town House, designed by award-winning Grafton Architects. It features three large dance studios, each equipped to professional standards with fully-sprung floors, mirrors and barres, and studio theatre.
Fees and funding
Additional costs
Depending on the programme of study, there may be extra costs that are not covered by tuition fees which students will need to consider when planning their studies. Tuition fees cover the cost of your teaching, assessment and operating University facilities such as the library, access to shared IT equipment and other support services. Accommodation and living costs are not included in our fees.
Where a course has additional expenses, we make every effort to highlight them. These may include optional field trips, materials (e.g. art, design, engineering), security checks such as DBS, uniforms, specialist clothing or professional memberships.
After you graduate
Career options include performance, choreography, directing, community dance, teaching or producing and managing dance. Outside the performing arts, graduates work in production, event management, fitness instruction, media and teaching.
What our students and graduates say
When I attended my open day at Kingston University it was clear that this was the uni for me: it focuses on delivering a range of styles with a lot of technique thrown in. Having a tour of the campus really gave me a feel of how welcoming everyone is and I felt welcome straight away.
Kingston as a town is very appealing, not only the shopping and chilled-out vibe but also the convenience of central London being so close, making socialising very easy and also handy for taking extra classes to enhance my uni journey.
My favourite thing about this course is the diversity. We study so many different styles, from contemporary to Indian to African to salsa; they give us so many opportunities for when we go into the industry. Not only is what we study diverse but also the people we meet on the course – there are people from all over the world.
Kingston University's main strength is the help that you get from staff, not only the lecturers but all staff in student support and beyond. They are all ready to give you help so don't be afraid to ask!
This course will help with my career as I want to teach in the future. It's given me the physical and mental ability to do so, my knowledge of the body and how it works is so much better than it was when I first started!
Alycia
Throughout my time at Kingston, I had many enjoyable opportunities that pushed me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to develop as an artist and a critical thinker. The course allowed me to graduate as a more rounded dancer, with a broader vocabulary and knowledge of the possibility of dance.
Since graduating, I have had many wonderful opportunities. I dance with B-Hybrid Dance, a contemporary based company and have the role of Company Intern for House of Jazz Company. I teach in Primary Schools for the London Ballet Company School and work at the Royal Academy of Dance as a Class and Information Assistant.
Georgia, graduate
I chose to study at Kingston for the diversity of the Dance BA (Hons) course. It offered unique styles of dance that I would not be able to find at other universities.
All the lecturers are friendly and so easy to talk to: they have made my time being a student totally stress-free, due to their kindness.
Kingston is a great location as it isn't too busy like in central London but you still get the 'city life' feeling. There are so many things to do and everything is accessible.
Outside studying, I take part in the KUDs dance society and am hoping to go to America to study in my third year, which is an amazing opportunity.
Kingston is a great university offering a lot of activities as well as support.
This course has enlightened me to all the possible careers I could have and has helped me decide what would be best for me.
Luka
When I walked into the main building I had a feeling and just knew this was the right place for me and that's no exaggeration. What struck me the most was how all of the lecturers were so friendly. They wanted to get to know me, but they also wanted me to get to know them as well.
The balance between contact time and independent study helped bring the most out of me. There was enough time spent with the lectures to really push me to learn and develop. Then enough independent time to develop my own artistic identity.
Since graduating, I have successfully gained representation and I'm working with my agent to break into the industry.
Ashley, graduate
Starting BA Hons Dance at Kingston University was daunting at first but I was quickly put at ease when welcomed by such friendly teachers and existing students!
Everybody is so helpful and genuinely wants the best for you during your dance journey.
Louisa
Key information set
The scrolling banner(s) below display some key factual data about this course (including different course combinations or delivery modes of this course where relevant).
Course changes and regulations
The information on this page reflects the currently intended course structure and module details. To improve your student experience and the quality of your degree, we may review and change the material information of this course. Course changes explained.
Programme Specifications for the course are published ahead of each academic year.
Regulations governing this course can be found on our website.
