Dance studies personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

I spend part of every week watching people work out how to move. At the leisure centre where I handle bookings, I see a toddlers' ballet group, a wheelchair basketball team and a seniors' tai chi class pass the same reception desk within two hours. That daily view has made me curious about questions I cannot answer from the desk: why certain movement is called dance and other movement is called exercise or therapy, who decides what counts as technique, and how a form like street dance changes when it moves from a car park into a studio with mirrors and a register. I want to study dance as a subject with a history and an argument, not only as something I do on Thursday evenings. My Access course introduced me to writing about performance, and I found I enjoyed the analysis as much as the dancing. Reading Judith Mackrell's Reading Dance gave me a vocabulary for describing what I was seeing, and an essay I wrote comparing two recorded works taught me how much detail I had been skipping past. I am drawn to a degree that combines practical technique with choreography and critical study, because I have learned in my own teaching that I make better decisions in the studio when I understand where a movement idea comes from. At twenty-nine I am applying with clear reasons rather than momentum, and I am ready for the reading as well as the rehearsal.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

My Access to Higher Education Diploma in Humanities and Performing Arts, studied over a year in evening and weekend classes, has been the main preparation for degree-level work. The performance units required me to learn set contemporary phrases, keep a rehearsal journal and present a short solo with a written rationale, which was the first time I had to justify choreographic choices rather than simply make them. The written units were equally useful: I produced essays on twentieth-century theatre practitioners and on representations of the body in visual culture, and I learned how to structure an argument, reference properly and cut a draft that had wandered. Returning to formal study after nine years was uncomfortable at first, particularly essay planning, so I used the college's study skills sessions and set myself a fixed two-hour slot four evenings a week. My earlier A-levels in English Literature, Business Studies and Photography still contribute: close reading helps me analyse choreography, and photography trained me to notice framing, line and where the eye is directed, which I now apply when I watch a stage picture. Alongside the course I take a weekly contemporary technique class and an occasional hip hop class at a studio in Hanley, and I keep a notebook of observations from recorded performances, including works by Akram Khan and Pina Bausch, noting how repetition and stillness are used.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

For the past three years I have volunteered as an assistant, and more recently a lead, for a seated and standing dance class for adults over sixty-five, run by a community group that uses our leisure centre hall. I plan a forty-minute session around a theme, choose music the group actually likes, and adapt everything for participants with arthritis, limited vision or low confidence. One regular attender cannot raise her arms above shoulder height, so I rebuilt a whole sequence around forearm and hand gesture, which turned out to be more interesting than the original. That class has taught me more about clear instruction, pacing and observing bodies carefully than any performance I have given. My paid work has been useful in less obvious ways. Eight years in retail, including three on a customer service desk, made me steady with people who are frustrated or nervous, and my current reception role involves scheduling rooms, chasing instructors, handling payments and resolving double bookings, so I understand how much unglamorous organisation sits behind a rehearsal happening at all. Outside work I swim twice a week and have started learning basic Labanotation from a library book, mainly because I wanted a way to record my own material that was not a shaky phone video. I also help my sister with childcare two afternoons a week, which has made me disciplined about planning study time rather than hoping for it.

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