Although there are only three credit courses with significant movement components, the OFA offers several extracurricular performance dance classes, but Bergmann says it is tough for these classes to compete with students’ busy academic schedules.

“The good news is that people come to these classes,” she says. “But when the going gets tough at midterms, attendance begins to drop off.”

Bergmann teaches Dramatic Arts 14: “The Art of Movement and Design,” which—along with Dramatic Arts 15: “Movement for Actors and Directors,” and a Folklore and Mythology class taught by Foster forms the core of Harvard’s credited dance program.

More in the Core

Several dancers say Harvard should supplement these three courses with a new dance class in the Literature and Arts B Core.

Literature and Arts B’s description in the course catalog says its classes focus on a “non-literary form of expression, and offers instruction in the elements of either visual or musical understanding, in the discipline of looking or listening.”

Foster says the Core would be a good fit for a dance theory class.

“Dance is a very powerful non-verbal art,” she says. “We’ve been exposed to so many different types of dance. We are all dancing, all these cultures, all the time, and we don’t analyze it enough.”

Though there is no Core dance theory class now, Senior Instructor and Artistic Director Emerita Claire Mallardi, who now teaches Dramatic Arts 15, used to teach a Core dance class decades ago.

“I taught the class for eight or nine years and it was always well attended,” she says.

Mallardi, who taught dance at Harvard for 38 years, says it’s been difficult to develop a strong dance program at Harvard.

“For years people have been telling me ‘Don’t waste your time, Harvard will never go in that direction,’” she says. “Harvard wants alums that make decent money to send back to the school. Artists aren’t going to do that.”

She says Harvard does not think of dance as an academic discipline.

“While other Ivy League schools like Princeton have dance departments, Harvard wants to remain the last scholarly institution,” she says.

Both Bergmann and Foster say there has been a significant increase in interest in credited dance classes.