Based at The Place, London Contemporary Dance School is one of the most exciting and influential contemporary dance spaces in Europe since it first opened its doors in 1969. As an LCDS student, you get to be part of a world-leading school and cultural hub, excelling at developing independent, authentic voices in the field for over fifty years. Home to a production house making and touring new work, a 280-seat professional theatre, an extensive offer of classes, courses and opportunities for adults and young people, and professional development programmes for artist, this creative and lively environment presents unparalleled opportunities for collaboration, networking, and growth.
You will study on our highly practical and intensive courses, with access to 11 dance studios, a fully equipped body conditioning room, a specialist library, and of course, The Place Theatre. You will be part of a vibrant and diverse student body of around 250 students and join a community of makers, leaders, educators, and performers.
Our specialised programme of postgraduate degree courses offers some of the most unique, interdisciplinary pathways for students looking to expand existing artistic practices, putting you in the driving seat, integrating and building on applied research whilst continuing to develop your professional portfolio of work.
Our postgraduate programme has grown and expanded over the past few years, becoming a well-rounded, interdisciplinary offering spanning across a wide range of fields in dance education, practice, and research.
With the introduction of the brand-new MA Dance: Performance and MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism alongside our redesigned MA Screendance and MA Expanded Dance Practice, we now have four innovative and robust MA courses to further develop your dance portfolio and professional career. All degrees at London Contemporary Dance School are accredited through the University of Arts, London – UAL.
London Contemporary Dance School at The Place is a truly exceptional institution to study a postgraduate course in dance and performing arts. Not only does the school have a long-established history of education, but its London location places students at the heart of dance and performance culture in the UK and Europe. Students benefit from an international community of aspiring practitioners and access to a range of student and career services, which help postgraduates to secure exciting professional roles after graduation. London Contemporary Dance School has a graduate employment rate of 80%, with students going on to work with exciting creative organisations in London and beyond.
London Contemporary Dance School offers four interdisciplinary postgraduate MA courses, which each build on the foundation of knowledge and experience gained at undergraduate level and include a more advanced research component, allowing students to reflect on their own practice and begin to establish a career pathway.
The MA Expanded Dance Practice is a 12-month postgraduate course, with a strong emphasis on research. Students develop and expand their own artistic practice through working with various other artists in the field and sharing work on different platforms throughout the year. They engage through various means of communication, participating in research, presentation, digital submissions, portfolios and live performance.
The MA in Screendance is a unique, practice-driven course which investigates dance and movement on screen, as well as looking deeper into the possibilities of moving image choreography. It is the only course of its kind in the world and attracts a highly international community of students.
The MA Dance: Performance focuses on developing your technical skills and artistic voice to enable students to navigate and shape the changing professional landscapes and contexts for dance performance.
The MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism is for students who want to develop a socially engaged dance practice which addresses the urgencies of our times. They will join a global community of artists and researchers working at the intersection of community dance and arts activism. The course takes place online primarily, designed intentionally to allow the students to remain embedded in their communities. Two, 2-week live residencies per year based at The Place in London allow them to connect with their peers and teachers in person as well.
Teaching staff are highly experienced researchers and dance professionals, many of whom are past students of London Contemporary Dance School. Meet our leading faculty for Postgraduate Studies.
Interested? Order a prospectus to find out more about the uni and the courses on offer.
GET PROSPECTUSLondon Contemporary Dance School has a total of around 200 students, making it a selective school. The postgraduate application process takes place online and there is plenty of information about required submission materials and information on the course-specific pages of the school website.
Entry onto either of the school’s masters programmes typically involves meeting the following standard minimum requirements, although each application is considered on an individual basis and there are many alternative routes to entry:
The admissions team makes selection based on evidence of dance ability, the quality of personal statement and a strong academic or professional reference.
Send a message directly to the uni to learn more about their entry requirements.
ASK A QUESTIONLondon is a vast and varied city, with a limitless supply of accommodation options. Whilst The Place does not have its own halls of residence or housing it does provide accommodation services to ensure that all students are able to find an ideal place to live during their studies. The city has a huge variety of areas to stay and options to suit all preferences.
Incoming students are encouraged to source accommodation before their course begins in September. They have access to the University of London Housing Service, a free organisation with a database of housing options across the city. The service can provide verified landlords and guidance with everything from tenancy agreements and contract details to utilities and insurance.
International postgraduate students may need to organise a guarantor for their rental agreement or pay several months in advance. The school’s accommodation team is available to provide advice all year-round.
The Place is equipped with all the facilities needed to study for a postgraduate degree in comfort and confidence. The school has a large and spacious lecture room, with plenty of natural light, two multi-functional meeting rooms, breakout spaces and fast WiFi throughout campus.
The school has 11 mixed-use dance studios, with sprung flooring; it’s ideal for dance classes, and can also accommodate workshops, auditions, photography and film shoots. There is also a 288-seat theatre with a fully licensed bar. It is a great facility for postgraduate students to access, as they are able to practise their craft in front of a live audience. The space includes two backstage dressing rooms and front of house staffing. There is an audio visual suite, in which the students can hire equipment for their own projects. These spaces are supervised by a team of helpful and welcoming staff, with lifts installed on all floors as well as female, male and gender-neutral facilities, and many other considerations for maximising accessibility.
Postgraduate students at The Place have free and full access to a comprehensive range of Student Services which are tailored to the school’s performing arts community. There is a high level of physical support available to dance students, including a team of professional physiotherapists, osteopaths and a soft tissue therapist, who work hard to provide the best care possible. This allows students to push their physical limits in a safe and supportive environment, with ready access to professional services.
The school also provides significant resources for students with disabilities, including accessible facilities and help with applying for Disabled Students’ Allowances. There is also a well-established programme of mental health support, including free counselling and in-house Mental Health Advisors.
Data from the National Student Survey shows that 94% of students feel like they are able to successfully contact staff when academic support is needed.
Find out more about the student support offered on the university’s website.
VISIT WEBSITEPostgraduate study at London Contemporary Dance School is defined by our four approaches and values that cross over all our Masters courses. We believe in:
Student-centered learning: Seminars and personal tutorials build upon your ideas, interests, skills and artistic practice.
Developing your artistic voice and agency: We encourage you to expand your practice and knowledge in dance and related fields, reframing and contextualising your practice. You develop your artistic agency and professional confidence in negotiating your careers.
Practice-led courses: This allows for more engaging content, challenging you to think in new ways, grounding theoretical understanding in ‘real world’ contexts, and providing skills and networks that will improve your employment prospects.
Guest artists and lecturers: Our network and community is global and diverse as a result of our 50 plus year history of being at the forefront of dance development. This allows us to collaborate with current artists and practitioners ensuring our courses are current and diverse.
In 2022, London Contemporary Dance School was also awarded the World Leading Specialist Provider Funding from the Office for Students for the 5-year period 2022-2027. In awarding the funding, the panel recognised the world leading quality of our institution and pedagogy but also our visionary London Contemporary Dance School faculty and alumni.
The award reflects The Place and London Contemporary Dance School’s legacy of being at the forefront of dance for over 50 years, developing artists and alumni that have global reach and significant impact on local and international communities. It recognises the value of The Place’s unique model of locating world class higher education provision within an organisation also engaged with performance, production, education and community engagement. This funding is instrumental in ensuring London Contemporary Dance School maintains and develops its world class provision of higher education in dance.
The Place is home to a diverse and inclusive community of people, and postgraduate students can be assured that their opinions are valued and their voice will be heard. Although there is no student’s union, the school has a team of elected student representatives who distribute information, organise events and provide opportunities to give feedback on the course and school.
These student representatives form an important layer between the student and staff and have a critical role in shaping and enhancing the student experience. They report student feedback and suggestions to staff, and in turn, communicate information from the organisational departments of the school to the students. Additionally, they are responsible for reporting any individual student issues to the appropriate department, so that fast and effective support can be offered.
The National Student Survey recorded that 97% of students felt that staff valued their views and opinions.
There is a lot going on at The Place, besides academics. Students benefit from a lively timetable of events and workshops, as well as a busy programme of performances at their in-house theatre - up to 200 per year!
Postgraduate students will find plenty of extra-curricular enrichment activities, bringing opportunities to meet people from outside their course, make new friends and discover new things. There are a number of student-organised clubs and societies which students are free to join, spanning a wide range of interests and activities. Options include the Eco Society, Feminist Society, and Ideas in Action - a group which promotes the school’s students within the professional creative sphere.
There are also opportunities to give back to the community through volunteering work and teaching opportunities, which, as well as being immensely rewarding, can also add value to a CV or professional resumé.
London is consistently ranked as one of the best cities in the world to be a student. It is a diverse contemporary capital, with a rich heritage of performance and creative arts and plenty to see and discover.
Postgraduate students are in an ideal environment to immerse in a world of styles and influences. It’s the perfect place to conduct active research into their areas of interest, whether they’re seeing a play, performance, film screening or simply wandering the city streets which have been home to so many creative performers throughout history. There is always something to discover and a community of like-minded people to explore with.
London students also benefit from a wide range of public transport services, offering convenient transport links throughout the country and beyond. Postgraduate students are well-placed to discover the many places and peoples of the UK and are only a short flight from many exciting European cities.
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London Contemporary Dance School is one of the world’s leading specialist dance universities and supports a community of postgraduate students whose applied research is critical to the evolution of new and existing dance practices.
With a history of teaching dance students for more than fifty years, The Place provides a professional, focused environment for students to build their craft and start to develop their career pathway alongside studies, ensuring a seamless transition to working life.
For example, the MA Expanded Dance Practice requires students build a larger and more sophisticated portfolio of work, which is of great help when applying to professional positions or working independently. The MA Screendance offers a more specialised programme investigating the intersection between camera and movement, an ideal preparation for a career in dance filmmaking. The MA in Dance: Performance focuses on training and enabling young performers to make a meaningful difference to the global dance eco-system, with opportunities to work and network with guest artists, companies, choreographers, and the creative industry at large as part of the curriculum. Our MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism course is uniquely crafted for emerging or established artists, delivered primarily online to ensure our students remain embedded within the communities with whom they work and leave this course with a more developed practice in the light of shifting discourses and challenges of our times.
Graduates are in high demand, with 80% of students in work or enrolled in further study within 15 months of course completion.
London Contemporary Dance School runs a generous programme of scholarships and bursaries to ensure that all students have the resources to study in confidence.
Bursaries are available through the Student Fund for Excellence, which is generously supported by the school’s alumni, professional partners and public donations, supporting those in need of additional financial support. It is open to all enrolled students at every level of study and is available to all fee-paying statuses. From 2022 onwards, students have been invited to apply to the Student Fund during the admission process. Indications of funding which is available is disclosed upon acceptance of offer and enrolment.
In the last academic year, the Student Fund subsidised the cost of study for 93 of its students, with the total amount of support valued at £150,000.
For MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism we also provide two fully funded scholarships to applicants from Global South countries. Learn more here.
Postgraduate tuition fees for UK students in the 2023/24 academic year are as follows:
MA Expanded Dance Practices – £9,650
MA Screendance – £10,300
MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism – Full Time: £9350 // Part Time Year 1&2: £5000 & £4350
MA Dance: Performance – £10,300
Postgraduate tuition fees for Overseas students in the 2022/23 academic year are as follows:
MA Expanded Dance Practices – £22,600
MA Screendance – £23,500
MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism – Full Time: £20,950 // Part Time Year 1&2: £10,950 & £10,000
MA Dance: Performance – £23,500
Students from the EU, EEA and Switzerland, may be eligible for home fee status. Prospective applicants are encouraged to visit the UKCISA website to check their eligibility, and students who are not eligible for Home fee status will be charged fees at the Overseas student rate.
Send a message directly to the uni to learn more about their scholarships and bursaries.
ASK A QUESTIONThe MA Expanded Dance Practice is a 12-month postgraduate course, with a strong emphasis on research. Students develop and expand their own artistic practice through working with various other artists in the field and sharing work on different platforms throughout the year. They engage through various means of communication, participating in research, presentation, digital submissions, portfolios and live performance.
The MA in Screendance is a unique, practice-driven course which investigates dance and movement on screen, as well as looking deeper into the possibilities of moving image choreography. It is the only course of its kind in the world and attracts a highly international community of students.
The MA Dance: Performance focuses on developing your technical skills and artistic voice to enable you to navigate and shape the changing professional landscapes and contexts for dance performance.
The MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism is for students who want to develop a socially engaged dance practice which addresses the urgencies of our times. They will join a global community of artists and researchers working at the intersection of community dance and arts activism. The course takes place online primarily, designed intentionally to allow the students to remain embedded in their communities. Two, 2-week live residencies per year based at The Place in London allow them to connect with their peers and teachers in person as well.
While there are no PhD programmes available to study at The Place, the London Contemporary Dance School’s two postgraduate programmes sets themselves apart from its undergraduate courses through the depth of research that masters students conduct during their studies.
Students are encouraged to immerse themselves in their subject area and make use of the school’s impressive collection of resources and research facilities. Their library contains a huge archive of film and digital footage in addition to their significant collection of books and journals, and even has a dedicated film viewing room.
Postgraduate students are surrounded by a team of academic practitioners, many of whom conduct their own professional research and are able to give valuable insights and advice.
Despite the physical nature of London Contemporary Dance School’s curriculum, there have been some recent adaptations which have allowed the school to offer various elements of online tuition to their highly international community of students. During the lockdown phase of the coronavirus pandemic the school temporarily shifted to a distance learning format, using Zoom classes for dance tuition and using their Virtual Learning Environment for communications and submission of work.
The Place has stated that it is looking to continue offering online services. There are now some pre-recorded virtual classes, starting with an introduction to the fundamental principles of ballet and contemporary dance.
Our MA Dance: Participation, Communities, Activism primarily takes place online, designed as such intentionally to allow students to remain embedded in the communities with whom they work while carrying out their postgraduate studies. Two, 2-week live residencies per year based at The Place in London allow them to connect with their peers and teachers in person as well.
There are currently no postgraduate open days available to book at this university.
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