Music

Swarthmore's Music Program is a vibrant community of performers, creators and critical thinkers who share a passion for music both past and present, pop and classical, near and far. Our academic courses invite students to think deeply about music; our ensembles bring talented students together to perform challenging and varied repertoire; and our program of private instruction enables students to study with some of the finest teachers from Philadelphia to New York City. The Dance and Music Programs share an integrated approach to composition, history, and theory, and believe this is essential to the understanding of dance as an artistic and intellectual inquiry. Students in our program are often active in many other fields, such as art history, biology, engineering, English, linguistics, and mathematics.

Dance

The Dance Program at Swarthmore College treats dance as a global discourse. The central intent of our program is cross-cultural study focusing on Africa and the African Diaspora, South Asia and East Asia, Europe and North America, and Latin America. The Dance and Music Programs share an integrated approach to composition, history, and theory, and believe this is essential to the understanding of dance as an artistic and intellectual inquiry. The mission of the Program is to offer students dance experiences that privilege a merging of embodied practice, history, and theory in relation to more multiple perspectives. Some courses are constructed to concentrate on one cultural context, and others are built to put a variety of perspectives in conversation. The role of dance as a social change agent is also present in Swarthmore dance offerings. All dance studies courses engage students in an investigation of the relationship of dance to other arts and areas of thought.

Learn more on the Musicand DanceDepartment websites and in the College Catalog, or browse performances.