The Dance Division's Mission

Dance plays a vital role in the college experience of self-definition. The study of dance in the university serves the creative intelligence with unusual immediacy by fostering and modeling innovative thinking skills. Through the study of dance, students learn to formulate problems, work with ambiguity, process nonlinear and nonverbal experience, synthesize information into novel solutions and express these in a variety of forms.

Our goal is to develop a cultivated mind, a trained body and passionate engagement through movement experience. In this way the Stanford dance program supplements the University's emphasis on stimulating the whole range of "intelligences" outside the strictly verbal.

The opportunity to study dance offers students the means to experience the body in new ways through diverse forms of movement. Dance becomes a means of giving physical voice to the most private and powerful aspects of an individual's understanding of oneself in relation to the world.

In the classroom, and in performance projects, dance fosters collaborative leadership and the ability to work directly with others. Functioning within a group the dance student builds openness, responsiveness and rapport. In an increasingly technological and competitive world, where opportunities for acquiring "people" skills are declining, dance presents a rare forum for the discovery, learning and reinforcement of these values and abilities.

Since its inception in 1911, dance at Stanford has positioned itself responsively to the needs of a changing university and society. By offering a range of studio and lecture courses aimed at enhancing understanding of dance as a way to communicate meaning, the dance program enables students to make connections between dance and other academic disciplines. It also fosters an appreciation of various eras and cultures through an understanding of their music and dance.

This exposure to dance and the arts constitutes a vital form of cultural literacy, one that is indispensable to freedom of inquiry and expression.

Office: Roble Gym & Dance Studio, Room 18
Phone (office): (650) 725-0740
Email: