Dance Program
Honor Society
Washington College has a chapter of Nu Delta Alpha—the national dance honor society. It is open to all students who maintain a 3.0 GPA show outstanding ability in dance technique, performance, scholarship, choreography, literature, and/or production. Members earn eligibility by taking dance classes, teaching classes, involvement in a performance, writing papers or critiques of performances, and through dance-related community service projects.
The Dance Honor Society holds an annual community dance workshop for local students in grades K-8 entitled "Get Up and Dance" where children explore creative movement, Broadway jazz, and hip-hop. NΔA members also spend a day at the local elementary school teaching dance to the physical education classes.
In spring 2007 NΔA hosted a leadership training workshop, Steps to the Future, for high school and college dancers interested in forming honor society chapters in their schools. The full day workshop included master classes in hip hop, lyrical, Fosse jazz, and Broadway jazz, and a performance of three works in progress by the Washington College Dance Company. The event was sponsored by the National Dance Association.
On two afternoons in March 2008 Nu Delta Alpha members helped members of two Girl Scout troupes earn their Service Badges in Dance. A small group of 6 young Scouts and a larger troupe of 18 older girls came to the College dance studio and were guided through warm ups, stretches, and a variety of locomotor movement patterns and rhythms. The college dancers explained the importance of warming up and stretching for a dancer, and taught pirouette preparations, some basic jazz movements, and a freeze dance. Scouts, their parents, and the Girl Scout leader were most appreciative of the college students' instruction. The mom's gave each of the WC dancers who helped teach a box of Girl Scout cookies at the end of the lessons.