| Abstract | University dance departments seek to prepare their students for the demands and realities of a variety of dance professions. The National Association of Schools of Dance (NASD) recognizes the Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) to be the undergraduate dance degree that emphasizes performance and choreography and prepares students for a professional career as a dance artist. Even so, for professional contemporary dance artists, opportunities are scarce and most must work multiple performance and non-performance jobs to supplement their income. This study endeavors to examine the alignment between NASD-accredited BFA dance programs and the demands and realities of the professional contemporary dance field as well as how BFA programs support graduates? abilities to transition into professional careers within the contemporary dance field. Because most of the scholarly literature on the research topic is over ten years old, through a phenomenological research design, I analyze the lived experiences of four recent BFA graduates and four contemporary dance choreographers in order to provide new perspectives of the research topic. In contextualizing the phenomenological data within the extant literature, I present three themes, which emerged from the data analysis that relate to BFA training and the transition to the professional contemporary dance field. These three themes are: experiences in non-performance careers; foundational training in contemporary dance techniques for stylistic range; and BFA degree structure as professional preparation. The three emerging themes reflect the unique challenges that accredited BFA programs encounter when preparing students to make the transition from dance major to dance professional. |
