At Eugene Lang College, the Arts area of study offers a serious creative experience in a liberal arts context. The program is offered in five tracks: Dance, Theater, Music, Visual Arts, and Arts in Context. In all the tracks, the curriculum combines historical and critical approaches with practice-based courses.
The dance track fuses contemporary dance study with innovative courses in dance history, movement theory, and collaborative arts. This integrated approach will enable you to develop both artistically and academically.
The Lang dance faculty and guest artists are distinguished dance professionals. They bring world-class experience into the classroom, and they are an invaluable resource for students who wish to make the transition into the professional dance world as performers, choreographers, company directors, teachers, dance historians, and critics.
Graduates from the Lang arts program are prepared for careers as professional artists, to work in arts organizations like performance companies, foundations, and publishers, or to pursue advanced study in theory, practice, or teaching. Most continue to work as artists, if not professionally then as a vocation, and our strong liberal arts emphasis means that graduates can go into any career for which a liberal arts degree provides a solid foundation.
Emphasis on the Liberal Arts
The best undergraduate arts education combines practicing a craft with knowledge of the contexts in which the arts have flourished over the centuries. While Lang arts students have ample opportunities to create art, they also receive a thorough education in the liberal arts (psychology, philosophy, literature, history, and science). Many of our graduates go on to professional careers, but all arts students at Lang receive the tools to carry on a life-long engagement with the power of art and ideas.
New York City Location
Eugene Lang College’s location offers unparalleled opportunities for undergraduates studying the arts. New York City has an immense wealth of readily accessible cultural resources at all levels: professional theater and dance, opera and classical music, jazz, popular music, commercial and avant-garde cinema, art galleries and some of the world’s great museums, lectures and literary readings, You will also have access to the city’s great performing arts libraries. Lang helps students take advantage of these resources with student discounts as well as courses and internships that take students out of the classroom and into the arts institutions of New York.
A Faculty of Working Artists
The members of our faculty bring to the classroom their own rich experiences as professional artists. Almost all are actively working in their professions.
The Visiting Artist Program
Twice a year, Lang invites a distinguished professional from the theater, dance, music, or visual arts world to work with our students in a variety of classroom lectures and discussions, public presentations, workshops, and master classes. Recent visiting artists include Martha Rosler and Marni Nixon.
Dance Residencies
Every spring Lang College invites a guest artist to either restage a classic work by a modern dance luminary or create a new work on our students. Residencies often include the technique, history, and life of the artist and their work including any historical, social, political, or cultural context. Guests work with students in intensive rehearsals to restage or create new repertory which is performed in the Spring Dance Performance every year.
Spring 2008: BESSIE award winning choreographer, Wally Cardona creates a new work on Lang Dance students. Students will be active participants in a process that includes research, experimentation, creation, and setting of new material. The work will debut in the Spring Dance Performance on May 2nd and 3rd at Ailey Citigroup Theater.