Our European faculty aims to create an atmosphere that encourages authentic and individual expression thereby cultivating artistic development and personal growth. Finding its roots in the European tradition of modern dance, German Ausdruckstanz and German dance theatre, the program combines classical ballet, modern and post-modern performance techniques as well as somatic approaches with specific cultural movement traditions such as Butoh or the traditional Italian Tarantismo. Students in the Accademia’s Dance Program will enjoy an enriching and challenging encounter with European dance culture in a truly inspiring environment.
Sabine Fichter
Director of the Dance Program (Off-site for Spring 2017 Program)
In the peaceful, but buoyant and young environment at the Accademia dell’Arte, I offer the students my longtime tutorial experience as a dance teacher and choreographer to stimulate their unique creativity. My large overview of interests and various professional contacts with choreographic and performative European productions allowed me to gather a knowledge which I am eager to pass on to American students. A further focus on interdisciplinary exchange between the techniques taught at the Accademia dell’ Arte will encourage the students to find their individual vocation and to develop as a versatile dancer, choreographer or teacher.
Massimo Gerardi
Interim Dance Program Director Spring 2017
The dance program at the Accademia dell’Arte offers American college students a unique semester-long learning opportunity in the heart of Tuscany. During the program, students dance, improvise, and create daily, while working with superb European artists in an intimate artistic community. With an intense focus on developing one’s own personal style, I find that students return to America with expanded self-awareness and more sophisticated skills as performers and art makers. Living collectively in a Renaissance villa surrounded by magnificent views, students advance their talents within an artistically fertile and supportive environment. Complementary course work on the Philosophy of Art invites further reflection and challenges students to comprehend their own responsibility as dancers, performers, choreographers, consumers and producers of art. The lovely town of Arezzo provides an authentic Italian experience and easy access via train to the capitols of Europe for weekend and spring break travel. This semester spent abroad is a positively beautiful and transformative experience for American college and university dancers.
Karen Dearborn
Professor, Chair of Dance
Muhlenberg College
