Program Overview
Dance is a practice of crafting pathways for curiosity, resiliency, authenticity, and connection through movement. Dance at Lawrence values every body, practice as research, and kinetic intelligence. Collaborative practice will be the foundation of your study. This innovative program will nourish you as you take an embodied, experimental approach across disciplines to art making. Be supported as a dance artist scholar on your journey toward choreographing a compassionate future.
Program Highlights
Learn from Working Artists
Study with artist-professors who are actively contributing to national and international conversations in dance.
Build a Sustainable Practice
Explore diverse dance techniques as embodied practices designed to support your growth and well-being throughout a lifetime of dancing.
Find Your Creative Community
Thrive in a supportive environment shaped by care, collaboration, and a strong sense of belonging.
Create, Perform, and Explore
Gain experience through performances, guest artist collaborations, site-specific work, and opportunities to choreograph your own dances.
Spotlight
LAWRENTIAN SPOTLIGHT
Alumni Perspective
“I think dance has been one of the most important things that’s really kept me involved in the Lawrence community, and I think without it, I would have been different. Dance has really shaped me.”
Eliana Stern ’23
Psychology, Dance, Theatre Arts
Skokie, Illinois
Types of Degrees
Dance: Embodied Collaborative Practice is a minor and Interdisciplinary Area. Pursuing a minor in Dance supports, deepens, and grounds your pursuit of any other major on campus. Dance minors have completed a variety of majors: Theatre Arts, Creative Writing, Art History, Gender Studies, Government, Mathematics, Psychology, Biology, and Music.
Advising
At Lawrence, academic advising helps you shape an educational experience that reflects your interests, goals, and aspirations. Your faculty advisor will support you as you plan your path, connect with campus resources and communities, and make informed decisions that prepare you for a meaningful and fulfilling future.
Faculty
You’ll be in good hands with professors who combine world-class artistry with a passion for teaching.
All Faculty
Mauriah Donegan Kraker (she/her)
Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance
mauriah.donegankraker@lawrence.edu
Mauriah Donegan Kraker is a midwesterner, a choreographer, a long-distance walker invested in slow travel. She walks place as a means of attending to the choreographic unfolding of time cycles in…
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Margaret S. Paek (she/her)
Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance
Margaret Sunghe Paek is a collaborative dance artist whose research engages in inclusionary methods and ensemble enterprises. She sees dance as a life practice and life as a dance practice.…
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Dance classes and rehearsals are held in Esch Studio-Warch Campus Center, with gorgeous, sprung wood floors and two walls of windows overlooking the Fox River. Bald eagles and pelicans fly by during class. Migratory patterns and seasonal shifts are observed and inspire our movement.
A wide variety of performance opportunities are available to all students. Join Dance Collective Ensemble where you will learn to craft your own performances alongside your classmates. Audition for semi-devised work, musicals, or Mainstage plays through the Theatre Department. Work with internationally known artists (Robert Battle in ’25, Patricia Smith in ’26) through our campus wide Creator in Residence program. Learn repertory and new choreographies through Dance Series visiting artists; past artists have included: Jeanine Durning, bkSOUL, Indah Walsh, Marion Ramírez, Tatyana Tenembaum, Michelle Gibson, Karlies Kelly.
