Postgraduate Diploma & MA Performers Route
The Performers Route was established in 2006 and aims to provide students with a full-time intensive training and choreographic touring experience as a member of mapdance company.
The audition process is necessarily rigorous and requires self-motivation, time management, dedication and commitment. The graduate company normally accepts 8-12 dancers per year.
This route gives students the vocational practice that will equip them to move into the profession through an intensive year of training in technical performance practice (ballet, contemporary, contact improvisation and Pilates). Creating the repertory and working first hand with a range of choreographers to make new pieces as well as reworking previously choreographed works dominates the first half of the programme. Touring to theatres, arts centres, Universities and Colleges takes mapdance to places ranging from Inverness to Denmark and Germany. mapdance has worked with artists such as Kerry Nicholls (KnDC), Pete Shenton (New Art Club), and Bettina Strickler (ex-Protein Dance), Nic Haffner (ex Frankfurt Ballet), Liz Aggiss ( Divas ).
All students on the Performers Route will take Repertory 1 and Technique for Performance. Additionally for those taking the MA, Reflective Practice is compulsory as preparation for undertaking the Dissertation. The Dissertation on this route may well involve an element of practical work to reflect the experience of the course.
Performers studying for the postgraduate diploma do not study Reflective Practice or present a Dissertation, but they can select one optional module from New Media and Performance, Pedagogical Approaches and Writing and Performance. Students undertaking the Pedagogical Approaches module will have the opportunity to put the learning and experience from Semester 1 into practice when touring, through educational work linked to the Repertory in a variety of schools, colleges and open workshops.
