BA (Hons) Contemporary Dance with Foundation Year

Introduction

Studying a foundation year in Contemporary Dance at Trinity Laban will develop your overall dance skills. You’ll experience an intensive practice-based programme, helping you prepare for undergraduate study.

You’ll develop technical skills by participating in a range of dance techniques including Release, Hip-Hop, Ballet for contemporary dancers, Dynamic Floorwork and Cunningham. Alongside this you will gain an understanding of how to use your body, learn the building blocks of dance creation and study the relevance of dance from a historical and social context. Towards the end of the year, you will develop performance skills by creating and performing two new works.

Key Features

You’ll develop strong technical, creative and choreographic skills, while learning about the diverse historical and socio-cultural contexts within the contemporary dance field.

During the year, you’ll learn about current methodologies relating to fitness, safe practice and dancer health and wellbeing.

The learning environment at Trinity Laban nurtures creativity, innovation, reflection, and collaborative approaches. This will develop your confidence to communicate ideas and contribute to critical discussion and creative enquiry. Through the Performance Platform Module you will have the chance to create and perform your work in an end of year sharing.

Those who successfully pass the foundation year will automatically progress to the BA (Hons) Contemporary Dance course. If you choose to continue your undergraduate studies at Trinity Laban, the BACD course will continue to give you the opportunity to work directly with professional dance artists to research, create, and present commissioned pieces of work. By the end of the 4 years of study you will have created and performed a wide range of challenging dance, acquiring the dance skills at the highest level to set you up for your future career.

Trinity Laban’s Foundation Dance course provides you with an integrated learning experience across modules, assessments and themes. Over the year you’ll cover four modules, Technical Practice, Creating Dance, Exploring Dance through Time and Location and Performance Platform.

You’ll study through a blend of taught classes, workshops, lectures, seminars and tutorials. You are encouraged to be active learners in contributing to discussion, peer observation and feedback, and group work.

The course consists of 1200 learning hours, this includes your contact hours in class, self-directed learning hours and preparation for assessments.

To study with us you’ll need:

Practical dance experience of one dance form

5 GCSEs 9-4 (A*-C) or a combination of 2/3 GCSEs, including English Language, 9-4 plus a BTEC First Diploma (Level 2)

Advanced GCE (A-level) or an AS GCE (AS-level) or equivalent , including level 3 Graded and Vocational Graded qualifications in Dance on the NQF/RQF e.g. level 3 qualifications of the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD); Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD) or BTEC National Diploma: Dance or a named Dance or Performing Arts pathway or combinations of the above level 3 qualifications.

If you do not have the standard academic requirements, we might be able to consider alternative qualifications. Please contact our admissions team in this case on  Admissions@trinitylaban.ac.uk

Students registering at Trinity Laban on a Higher Education course should be at least 17 by the date of registration.

Auditions

The audition workshops will allow you to demonstrate your potential to acquire the technical and creative dance skills and develop the versatility and resourcefulness needed within the professional sector of contemporary dance and the creative industries more broadly. All applicants will be invited to join an audition in person.

If you cannot attend auditions in person, you can submit recordings of yourself. The recordings are auditioned in the same way as live auditions and are considered by relevant tutors. These applications are submitted using Embark.  For more information see Dance Auditions.

English language requirements (if applicable):

IELTS (General or Academic Training) minimum 5.5 in all four areas; or B2 First (Cambridge English) minimum 160 in all four areas; or Trinity College London – Integrated Skills in English level II or above. For alternative tests and possible exemptions please our English Language Requirements page.

If you require a Student visa to study in the UK you may require a Secure English Language Test (SELT). More information can be found here.