Choreography

Master of Fine Arts in Choreography

This has changed the way I approach choreography. This has opened up a door to experience things that I was unaware of before coming into the program, and it has opened up new opportunities for me to look  at dance from different points of view.

As an artist and a choreographer, the program has really helped me grow in solidifying and narrowing down what I would like to do because  I'm very multi-layered, multi-dimensional in the way that I articulate my movement and where  my movement comes from. I'm able to continue my work in a manner that has more clarity that is a little bit easier to be digested from spectators who may not have any kind of dance experience or have ever even taken a dance class before.

Our curriculum was devised with our model, which was intentional when we came up with it. It is a low-residency graduate degree,  so a Master of Fine Arts is a terminal degree.  In pursuit of that, they've been traditional forms for many years and only since technology has advanced had the potential to have models like this come about.

So one of the most often  questions we get asked is how do you do a dance  degree online and well it's not an online degree  there's a portion of it that meets in person as  we begin so we can get to know um each person the  way in which they work and move and then from there they go into coursework that can be delivered.

I had originally chosen Jacksonville  University's low-residency MFA program because it gave me the opportunity to continue pursuing higher education within the field of dance while still being able to work at the studio, work at my special needs schools, and kind of still be around family. I didn't have to give up my career or my home and the things that I do to travel and do this program somewhere else, so it was really nice to know that I would be engaging with a quality program at the same time.

The community with the  MFA students and faculty is unique because, with the students, even though we're not fully on campus together year-round, when we come in and work those two weeks that we're on campus, we  are still connecting through our work. We check in with one another, whether that's via text or video call, and when we're here, I think it just really solidifies the community that's within.

Our MFA in choreography is accredited by the National Association of Schools of Dance ; it gives it that kind of stamp of approval that you know that somebody's checking on you to make sure that the quality of your degree has value.  

What am I most excited about after graduation? I think that comes down to a lot of different things because I'm trying to figure out what's next. I'm in that process; I'm still in the program, but I'm trying to figure out what my next step is.  For me, moving forward means continuing to pursue my choreography, continuing to pursue my  passion, and seeing where and how I can level up.