This semester will be the first for the Jacobs School of Music Dance Department. The new department will be a combination of the previous ballet program in Jacobs and the contemporary dance program in the College of Arts and Sciences.
The merger of the two programs comes after the passing of House Enrolled Act 1001. The act, which took effect July 1, 2025, requires a minimum of 15 graduates from bachelor’s degree programs at public universities. The dance program was one of 116 at IU Bloomington affected by the state legislation.
“It’s for the strength of the degree,” Sarah Wroth, chair of the dance department and director of ballet, said. “The bachelors of science in ballet wasn’t strong enough to stand on its own, so contemporary dance came over and now, there’s strength in numbers.”
The biggest changes will be for future contemporary dance students, as the program moved from CASE to Jacobs, meaning their curriculum will change slightly. According to Elizabeth Shae, director of contemporary dance, this means that students will now have less general education requirements and more space for choosing dance study.
Students already in the contemporary dance program will have the option to continue their degree in the CASE or move over to Jacobs. Shae said that around 50 students were impacted by the change and most chose to move to Jacobs to finish their education, estimating that less than five chose to stay in CASE.
Other than changes to general education requirements, students will experience more ease in collaboration between concentrations. Wroth and Shae said students have already gotten the opportunity to work together, and many of the contemporary dance professors have gotten to teach the ballet students.
“They just mesh so instantly,” Shae said. “There was none of this, like, separation. Everyone kind of just dove into the collaboration.”
Shae said that students and professors of each program have strong disciplines and are trying learn from each other.
The merger also allows for opportunities for ballet and contemporary dance students to socialize more. The department had its first mixer between ballet and contemporary dance Sunday, which gave students the opportunity to mingle and meet new dancers.
“It’ll be nice to have conversations with one another because we’re in different buildings as of right now,” Lilly Mozie, a junior ballet major with an outside field in African American and African Diaspora studies, said. “I think there will be more opportunities where we’ll get to know each other and go see their performances and vice versa.”
Mozie learned about the merger in the spring and thought it was a great idea. She said the dance community can be small and meeting and learning from other dancers is a great opportunity.
For Mozie, even just watching other styles of dance can be helpful because it gives her new ideas of things to try. Mozie said she hopes to go to a professional company after college, a planning process that typically begins in a dancer’s junior year.
“It’s always so important as a ballet dancer to learn other styles and be able to like embody different styles because when you get to professional companies you kind of have to be a versatile dancer and be able to fit into different categories,” Mozie said.
Although it's hard for her to notice many changes yet at the beginning of the semester, Mozie said she is excited to see where things go with the merger.
“We have this amazing arts campus like right here,” Shae said. “The MAC, the school of music buildings, theater, the IU Auditorium, the art museum. I mean this whole quadrant of campus is this amazing physical facility for the arts.”
Now that dance has their own department, Shae said that it will give the arts the opportunity to make more of a campus footprint.
