Master of Arts in Choreography
Helsinki, Finland
DURATION
2 Years
LANGUAGES
English, Finnish, Swedish
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
Request application deadline
EARLIEST START DATE
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TUITION FEES
EUR 5,000 / per year *
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* annual tuition fee for students who study in English and who are not citizens of the EU, EEA or Switzerland
Introduction
Note: no admission is available in 2024. Please get in touch with the University of the Arts Helsinki to know about the next possible time to apply!
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Develop into an artist with a personal voice while interacting with society and its changing views of art.
Why study here?
The Master’s Degree Program in Choreography is comprised of two years of full-time studies that will help you develop into an independent artist. You will develop your critical awareness and understanding of the practices and strategies in contemporary choreography and of the interactional relationship between art and society.
Content and objective of the program
The choreography program leading to a Master of Arts (Dance) consists of two years of full-time studies. The studies (120 cr) consist of thematic studies on choreography and personal artistic projects, contextual studies, optional studies, and an MA thesis. The focus is on the central questions and methods in contemporary choreography, the history and theoretical basis of choreography and contemporary performance, as well as on the work opportunities and the work environment of an artist. Artistic projects and collaborations with students from other degree programs both in Finland and abroad also play an important role.
The program emphasizes a historically conscious, yet critical, open, and research-based take on choreography. Students are offered a diverse learning environment, which supports artistic development, dialogue-oriented interaction, and cooperation, and where practical and theoretical questions of contemporary choreography are integrated into artistic processes.
The program collaborates with Uniarts Helsinki’s other degree programs in various ways. It offers students exceptional opportunities for artistic activity, making use of the academy’s performance facilities and production services. The program is actively involved in international partnerships and educational cooperation, considering the international nature and field of activities of a choreographer’s work.
The Master’s Degree Program in Choreography advances students’ readiness for doctoral studies and artistic research, collaborates with the Theatre Academy’s Performing Arts Research Centre (Tutke), and is also an essential agent in the Theatre Academy’s international publication series Kinesis, which publishes research studies on dance.
In addition to the program’s artistic director (the professor), the teaching staff comprises visiting teachers and professors, lecturers, artists, and other experts in the field.
Collaborations
The MA Program in Choreography collaborates with other degree programs of the University as well as with the Performing Arts Research Centre (Tutke). The program also has an active relationship with dance professionals by welcoming visiting artists and organizing mentorship programs for students.
International mobility
The program is actively involved in international partnerships and educational cooperation, considering the international nature of the work of contemporary choreographers. The students take part in European dance events and visit other art education institutions. The program receives a number of guest teachers and artists from the international field of dance and performing arts each year.
Artistic projects
The MA Program in Choreography offers students exceptional opportunities for artistic activities, making use of the Academy’s performance facilities and services.
The degree requirements include four artistic projects. Their aim is to support the student’s personal, creative and structured view of the multidimensional ways in which choreography manifests as art.
Teachers
Our teachers are experienced experts in their field. In addition to the permanent teaching staff, the program welcomes top experts from both Finland and abroad as guests on a regular basis.
The Nordic Choreographic Platform (NCP)
The program participates in developing and establishing Nordic cooperation in the field of MA education in choreography. Parties to the collaboration project are The Danish National School for Performing Arts, The Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and Uniarts Stockholm. NCP forms part of the annual syllabus of the degree program in choreography, with varying ways of implementation. Participation in the NCP program provides students with a multi-faceted learning environment and broadens their future professional field by offering the possibility of networking with other students and producers alike.
Program Outcome
- Students who have completed the Master’s Degree Program in Choreography possess a critical awareness of the viewpoints impacting contemporary art, the strategies of related art forms, and, more broadly, the movements, changes, and challenges of a global society. They are able to read, observe and identify the ways in which art communicates in society and how art forms change over time.
- They have their own views of artistic approaches to current issues and of what forms of choreographic work and thought these could produce.
- Students are familiar with different choreographic practices and methods of creating performance, and able to organize their own artistic process and communicate it to other members of the workgroup and to producers. They are able to create an independent choreographic work from a plan, document their work, and present it to others.
- Students are familiar with artistic research and theoretical discourse relating to choreography and performing arts, and possess the necessary skills for post-graduate studies in the field. Based on the knowledge and skills offered by the program, students possess a readiness to communicate the issues of their own field of art and to independently ponder these issues.
- They are capable of networking and actively seeking out new forms of working as well as different operational strategies within the arts.
- They are able to perceive the different roles and opportunities of the artist, now and in the future. They are able to operate creatively, critically, and constructively in the field of art and society, actively participating in the collegial reform of choreography as an art form and its operating environment.
Curriculum
The starting point of studies is a conception of art as an exploratory and creative, proactive and social activity. Art operates at multiple sensual, corporeal, aesthetic, and conceptual levels, avoiding one-dimensional definitions of instrumental value and always redefining the field of both personal and social freedom, responsibility, and meaningfulness.
Contemporary art and the artist are seen as participants in an interactive and connected reality, where including and impacting environmental, technological, and social ecologies require a constant review and reassessment of choreographic agency and the forms, methods, and mediums of art.
In the studies, these premises are investigated through both the student’s own points of interest and through the possibilities offered by art and research processes, practices, and conceptualizations. For dance art, this means a careful study of core concepts such as choreography, composition, representation, and context, placing them in new relationships that may be processual, multi-disciplinary, virtual, and reflective.
Corporeal perception of movement, creative choreographic exploration, and performative, material, and immaterial relationships also constitute foundational elements of the art of choreography. Together with work-specific themes and aims, they form a framework in which audience and community, art and artist meet, and where these relationships can be investigated and renewed within a specific work of art.
Comprehensively, the studies offer students a broad, methodical, community-centered, and discursive interface for the field and working environment of contemporary choreography.
Studies consist of thematic studies in choreography and artistic projects, contextual studies in contemporary performance and theory, production and professional field studies through a Nordic network of collaboration (NCP), optional studies, and an MA thesis.
Scholarships and Funding
Please visit the university website for more information.