Gatekeepers to Gateway-makers: reimagining partnerships, collaborations, and celebrations of the many movers of university campuses

Abstract

Many college campuses across the United States are home to numerous extracurricular dance clubs that embrace a broad range of dance styles and cultural contexts that welcome all students to engage with dance. These extracurricular clubs often exist in stark contrast to dance major programs in the US which have conventionally centred embodied Whiteness in their curricular structure and goals resulting in the exclusion of atypically trained dancing bodies from entering dance major programs. In this article we ask, where did these dancing bodies go? This research seeks to locate the dancing bodies that either by departments’ refusal to admit, or by choice, dance on university campuses outside the dance department. Using Critical Race Theory in relation to where, how, why, and what dance occurs across campus, this article asks dance educators to carefully consider if we are gatekeepers or gateway-makers when it comes to providing students access to professional aspirations via a college degree.