Professional Dance (Top-Up) BA (Hons)
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Top up your skills and join a vibrant dance community. Immerse yourself in the activity of a national dance hub. Connect to dance in the studio and beyond.
Overview
BA (Hons) Professional Dance (Top-Up) is practically focused and has a strong emphasis on developing your dance technique and performance skills in a range of forms.
The course has a strong core training in contemporary dance practice, but also enables you to design your own technical development by engaging in regular classes in other styles. This is supported by Dance City’s public class programme with over 25 styles to choose from, including commercial, ballet, hip hop, musical theatre and many more.
We value practical learning at Dance City; as such, you will have the opportunity to participate in and lead on real projects. In Year 3, you'll collaborate to manage, coordinate, and curate a festival of your work at Dance City, open to the public and part of Dance City’s programme. As well as preparing you for work in dance, the skills developed on our course are highly transferable and will support further study or working life, whatever your path post-degree.
Our course enables you to become a reflective practitioner, independent thinker, and changemaker. You'll be introduced to the core skills of teaching and facilitation, management, administration, and producing.
You'll be introduced to Dance City’s wider team, including producers, teachers, and dance managers in the first week of the course, so that you can develop relationships and learn from working practitioners.
We'll empower you to engage with the theoretical and social study of dance and apply this to your own work.
We have a special, studio-based approach to this part of the course, and draw together practical choreographic development with dance history and scholarship, also including a unique set of reflective modules.
Why us?
- Our Drama, Dance and Cinematics courses are 1st in the north-east for student satisfaction (Complete University Guide 2025)
- You'll be based at Dance City in Newcastle, the National Dance Agency for the North East of England, which can offer further opportunities to explore a variety of dance styles, as well as your daily rigorous technical training
- You'll benefit from the passion, experience, and dedication of inspiring tutors who've worked within the dance industry as professional performers, choreographers, teachers, managers, or academics
- As a University of Sunderland student, you'll also benefit from all of the University's facilities and support
- Our Drama and Dance courses are 10th in the UK (Guardian University Guide 2025)
- Dance City has a unique approach, nurturing dance careers in education, health, and management, as well as performance
- Nationally renowned guest artists and choreographers are regularly invited to teach, and these may include Joss Arnott, Angus Balbernie, Kerry Biggin, Gary Clarke, Neus Gil Cortes, Kerry Nicholls, ReGina Wielingen, Renaud Wiser, Voxed Theatre, Patrick Ziza, Eleanor Sikorski, and Roberta Jean
