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California Institute of the Arts

MFA: Choreography

The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance

Person with black hair lying face down draped over a shiny silver cube

Choreography by MFA candidate Marissa Brown

Explore the Future of Dance

The newly redesigned MFA in Choreography program at The Sharon Disney School of Dance at CalArts launches in 2027, inviting candidates to think expansively about the future of dance. In this re-envisioned, two-year program, you’ll explore new forms and new media, investigate identity, interrogate live and virtual performance, deepen your curiosity, and expand your choreographic practice within the larger backdrop of social transformation and rapidly advancing technologies. 

Group of women in casual clothing dancing as confetti falls all around them and covers the floor

Alve Fu, Light as a Feather (MFA thesis project)

Technique and artistry

MFA Choreography

Join other dance practitioners who are elevating and extending the field—redefining dance—through innovative choreography, cross-genre performance, and ingenious production strategies.

Let’s connect

CalArts’ hands-on approach allows MFA candidates to set work on our amazing BFA in Dance students and join a community of artists who will become your collaborators post-CalArts: in film and video, animation, art, music, theater, and design. Here, with mentorship from the internationally recognized artists and thinkers comprising our faculty, we will support your professional and artistic development as a choreographer through technology and real-world practice. 

How the CalArts MFA in Choreography is unparalleled
We offer a dynamic dance environment that’s embedded within the country’s only comprehensive, accredited college of the visual and performing arts, setting the stage for unlimited collaboration opportunities and shared curriculum across our metiers (programs). 

Our MFAs have diverse options for concentrations, including dance for camera, dance theater, and site-specific dance, as well as the opportunity to pursue a supplemental concentration in Integrated Media, which allows for further exploration of technology and digital media in dance. Through the Arts Education Concentration, MFA Choreography candidates have a variety of teaching opportunities during their residency, including select classes within the BFA curriculum.

What can I look forward to?

Our curriculum covers both the aspirational and practical aspects of a career in dance, ranging from organizing concepts in choreography and meeting the practical demands of producing concerts, to identifying and articulating your artistic and professional goals and then making a concrete plan to reach them. In working with your faculty mentor, you’ll identify a progression for your choreographic projects in alignment with your research that will be presented over the course of your first year, with opportunities to work with and set choreography for CalArts’ outstanding BFA Dance students. 

We ask our MFAs to maintain a physical practice—either through our technique classes, or a self-designed program—and a studio practice that is part of your research. You may perform in your own work or in the work of others and make and present work beyond curricular assignments on our stage or elsewhere.  

Additionally, each MFA candidate receives a generous stipend for their final thesis concert—a capstone project created during the second year of the program. At the outset of year two, you’ll participate in forming your thesis committee, with faculty who will guide and assist your thesis development. To fully realize this culminating presentation, our MFA candidates have the opportunity to collaborate with artists and designers from all the other métiers within the Institute. 

NOTE: While other performance opportunities abound throughout the two-year program, MFAs do not perform in their own thesis project so that the focus remains on creating works and/or honing the producing skills necessary to set our graduates for successful post-CalArts career.

Interested in this program?

View our step-by-step application guide to learn more.

Start your application

Admission requirements

To be considered for the MFA Dance program, you must complete an application and all program-specific requirements. Before applying, please familiarize yourself with the detailed application requirements and resources available to assist you in this important process. 

View detailed admission requirements

Degree requirements

Each CalArts MFA Choreography student develops a course of study in consultation with their faculty mentor, and completes three original works in the first year and a graduate independent project/thesis concert in their second in order to complete the program.

MFA Choreography academic requirements

Minors and interdisciplinary opportunities

In addition to CalArts’ naturally collaborative atmosphere, several programs of study may be pursued concurrently with a student’s chosen metier, such as a concentration in Arts Education or Integrated Media..

Learn more about MFA concentrations

Courses you might take

What courses would you take as a graduate student in Choreography? Browse the courses offered in the Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance, including opportunities to build high-level proficiencies in performance technique, choreography, dance production technologies, and critical understanding of the art form.

School of Dance courses

Meet the faculty

At CalArts, faculty and students are collaborators, teaching, learning, and working together as members of our community of artists. 

All Choreography faculty

Dance x Film

Art in motion

Get inspired! Explore a selection of films created with CalArts dance artists.

Slightly out-of-focus image of a person’s head, seen from below, shrouded in translucent fabric.

Hanna Tzong-Han Wu (BFA 22, MFA 24), Dance x Film, Ghosts in You

Some of our alumni

More School of Dance alumni

West Side Story purists, beware.

Alumni Stories

“This role is different than anything I’ve ever done,” said Marissa Brown (Dance MFA 20) of her Broadway debut in Ivo van Hove’s modern adaptation of the beloved musical. “Performing on Broadway feels like another new experience that I’m grateful to navigate through and learn.”

Two groups of dancers face each other, pulling the two characters in the center in opposite directions. The left group wears shades of blue and the right group wears shades of red. They are on a dark city street.

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Want to learn more?

We got you. Our Admissions team is all about providing the information you need to decide if CalArts is right for you. We’re excited to connect with you for a tour of our legendary campus, a virtual info session, or at one of our admissions events across the country or around the world. Take the next step—we’re here to help.