Performance Opportunity: Explore 24-25 Senior Dance Choreographic Projects
Learn about opportunities to perform in the new choreographic works planned by next year’s seniors in the Dance Program including works by Adam Davis, Tierra Lewis, Sophie Main, Kate Stewart, Clara Toujas-Bernate,and Faith Wangermann. A one-hour info session on May 2 from 3:30-4:30 PM includes refreshments.
Casting for these spring 2025 projects will happen through workshops held in early fall on Tuesday, September 3, 2024, and Thursday, September 5, at 4:30 p.m.
Princeton Dance Festival
The Festival, held each year in late fall, is the program’s major event of the year. Students prepare throughout the fall semester for this performance which is presented in the 350-seat Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center. Repertory and new works by professional choreographers and faculty are staged on students either through a fall course or through extracurricular rehearsals with guest choreographers. In past years, students have performed the works of Kyle Abraham, Robert Battle, Camille A. Brown, Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, Francesca Harper, Bill T. Jones, Mark Morris, Ohad Naharin, Crystal Pite, Hofesh Shechter, and Pam Tanowitz. Professional lighting and costume designers collaborate with the Lewis Center’s production team to present one of the Lewis Center’s essential performance events.
DAN 328: Princeton Dance Festival: Choreography and Performance
DAN 328: Princeton Dance Festival is a studio course that culminates in two performances: the Princeton Dance Festival at the Berlind Theatre and a choreographic showing in the Hearst Theater. Students learn and perform dances either through collaboration with faculty or by learning significant dances from contemporary choreographers. In the choreography precepts, students engage in creative practices to gain fluency with a range of choreographic approaches. Readings and viewings support students’ growth as performers, choreographers, viewers, readers and writers of dance. Taught in fall 2024 by Rebecca Lazier, Davalois Fearon, and Raja Feather Kelly.
Dance Placement Class
Want to perform in Princeton Dance Festival? Plan to attend mandatory placement class on Monday, September 2, 2024, at 3 p.m. in the Hearst Dance Theater. Students will perform in the Princeton Dance Festival at the Berlind Theatre on November 22, 23 & 24, 2024. Preparations will require several costume fittings, as well as a technical and dress rehearsal the week of the performance. Students will also participate in a choreographic showing during Reading Period (mandatory).
Please email Dance Program Associate Cindy Rosenfeld at cr17@princeton.edu with any questions.
Guest Choreographer Auditions for 2024-25
Want to perform in Princeton Dance Festival but can’t take a dance course? Audition to be in a guest choreographer’s work! Students may audition for all opportunities but would only be cast in one. These works will be performed at the Princeton Dance Festival, November 22-24, 2024
Guest Choreographer Auditions will be held September 7, 2024. More info on the 3 guest choreographers coming soon!
Senior Dance Productions
Seniors in the Program in Dance can satisfy their independent work toward a minor in dance by choreographing new work, performances, or through scholarly research. These productions take place mainly in the spring semester and are supported through faculty and guest artist advisors and design teams and by the Lewis Center’s production department. Seniors choreographing new work cast their pieces from students both in and outside the dance program, providing students an opportunity to work with a senior in the realization of their vision for new choreography; sometimes the seniors choose to create these works in collaboration with their casts. Seniors electing to do a performance are matched with guest or faculty choreographers to perform a new or repertory work — often a solo, duet or small ensemble piece.
Some of these works are part of the spring senior collaborative dance concert presented in the Berlind Theatre or state-of-the-art Hearst Dance Theater in the Lewis Arts complex, while others are presented as individual productions, some of them as site-specific works. Most or all the seniors in the program perform together at the end of the spring in a repertory or new work choreographed by a guest choreographer.
Past Performance Opportunities
See photos, video trailers, and view information on guest choreographers and works performed at past Princeton Dance Festivals on our season archive pages.
In this video, discover how the Program in Dance reimagined its annual Princeton Dance Festival in 2020 for a socially distanced world during a global pandemic with the help of faculty, choreographers, and participating students living throughout the United States and abroad.