Dance
Apply NowTHRIVING ON THE DANCE FLOOR
In-Person:
- Jazz‑Pop - Tu/Th, 11:10 AM
- Ballet - M/W, 3:00 PM
- Ballet - Tu/Th, 9:35 AM
- Cardio Dance - Mon/Wed, 9:10 AM
- Cuban Salsa - Mon, 6:00 PM
- Tango - Wed, 6:00 PM
Online Asynchronous:
- Cardio Dance
- Dance Appreciation
- Global Dance Traditions
Dance with us!
The Dance Program at Skyline College elevates students' dance ability, technique,
performance and expression. We offer a variety of courses to help students to enter
the dance profession, achieve their Associate Degree in Dance and/or transfer to a
dance program at a four-year university.
Students performing in Dance Concerts each semester can dance in front of live audiences,
choreograph and perform their own and faculty productions in many styles, and participate
in producing live shows. The Dance program also collaborates with the Music, Drama,
Cosmetology and Visual Arts departments on our Musical Theater productions.
Check out the Program
Students pursuing the Associate Degree in dance receive one-on-one academic counseling from the department lead, Amber Steele. Feel free to contact us for more information!
Overview
The Skyline College academic program focuses on an emphasis in technique that is split between elective courses and the most commonly required dance techniques in universities and entertainment businesses.
Students take six units of a mix of Contemporary Modern Dance, Jazz Dance, and Ballet. They also take six units of elective technique courses, which may include Hip Hop, Tap, Social Dances, Tango, Acting Courses and more. Students fulfill their Art GE by taking a lecture course, DANC 100 Dance Appreciation, a Pilates course on physical alignment, and two units of Production, which involve participating in the Dance Concert and/or Musical.
Our program was revised in 2018 to remove any courses that alumni had reported as being obstacles for their transfer, and so we are proud to have a dance major which is possible to finish the courses required for the major under a year and half, leaving the student some flexibility to schedule their other GE requirements.
Career Outlook
An Associates Degree in Dance can help students to be competitive in the job market for teaching positions in dance studios, working with adults and/or children; working in administration, performance or teaching positions in arts organizations; writing and academic research at universities and for social media; students who are seeking transfer to a four-year university dance program; as well as dancers pursuing professional performance careers.
Dancing at Skyline: Groove and Thrive in 2024!
In-Person: Contemporary Modern Dance, Jazz Dance, Afro-Cuban Dance, Ballet, Cuban Salsa, Dance Performance & Production, Hip Hop, Tango & Musical Theater Dance Production
Online (Asynchronous): Cardio Dance, Dance Appreciation, Global Dance Traditions & Hip Hop Dance Roots
| Program | Type | Total Units |
|---|---|---|
| Dance | AA | 60 Units |
Upon completion of the program students will be able to:
- Interpretation and Performance: Provide a more authentic and individualized interpretation of a given dance form through a demonstration of appropriate levels of technique that incorporate cultural elements of this dance form (e.g. costume, history, vocabulary, rhythm and music)
- Creative Collaboration: Create and develop unique movement sequences, and collaboratively organize that material into a dance
- Critical Evaluation: Critically evaluate and objectively discuss dance as a performance art
Each semester, dancers at Skyline College have the opportunity to get involved with the Dance Show and the Musical. Check out some of our past dance shows below!
Spring 2025 | POV: This is Why I Dance
Skyline College Dancers dance their perspectives on how dancing manifests Self-Expression, Resilience, Protest, Passion and Community. Contemporary, heels, hip hop, k-pop, Pilipino cultural dances, jazz, cuban salsa and ballet dances that will have you cheering in your seats! With special guests Bay Area Dancers, Delight Dance Co. on pole, Aaron Alferez and more! Presented by the Skyline College Dance Honor Society with the support of the ASSC.
Fall 2024 | NETHERWORLD NETHERWORLD
Skyline College Dancers travel to the Netherworld on a journey of love and redemption in a show packed with slick moves in hip hop, k-pop, afro, jazz, contemporary and ballet dances that will have you cheering in your seats! With special guests Anna Yanushkevich, Bay Area Dancers and more! Presented by the Skyline College Dance Honor Society with the support of the ASSC.
Spring 2024 | Vivid Visions
Vivid Visions featured an evening of dances by our Skyline College Dance Department Faculty and Students, as well as special guests, Bay Area Dancers, College of San Mateo Dancers, and Folau House, led by alumnus George Folau! Presented with support of the Associated Students of Skyline College and the Skyline College Dance Honors Society
Fall 2023 | Danceversity
A night of performances featuring the choreographers and dancers of the Skyline College Dance Program, presented with support of the Associated Students of Skyline College and the Skyline College Dance Honors Society.
Spring Musical
Don't miss this incredible opportunity to be part of Skyline College's annual spring production. Auditions are generally held in late fall. Rehearsals/courses run throughout the spring and culminate in final performances in April.
Learn more about the spring musical.
Fall Musical
Don't miss this incredible opportunity to be part of Skyline College's fall production, always a musical that will leave a lasting impact on performers and audiences alike. Rehearsals/courses begin at the start of the Fall semester, and performances are held in November.
Learn more about the fall musical.
Amber Steele
As a tenured professor at Skyline College, Amber Steele leads the Dance Program at Skyline College, teaching Contemporary Modern, Jazz, Choreography, Pilates, Core Fitness and Yoga with a focus on technique for strength, longevity, and emotional expression. She has a passion for inspiring her students to break out of their shells and surpass their own expectations, and to see dance in a broader social context. Her lecture courses work to de-colonize dance history education by examining how richly black vernacular dance infuses American culture. She directs student-produced dance concerts that showcase many dance styles, and she mentors students to share their work as a form of community service and activism.
Projects include working as the Choreographer, Artistic Director and Coordinator for the Skyline College Performing Arts Showcase, Spring Musicals and Annual Dance Shows, Faculty Advisor for the Yoga Club, and the Dance Honor Society Club, Academic Senate Senator and Professional Development Committee.
As a featured dancer, Steele toured Germany and performed at the Cannes Film Festival in "TRIP - Remix Your Experience," a multimedia exhibition of film, live music, and art. Her nationally acclaimed dance-comedy troupe, the Living Dead Girlz, performed across the nation from the Knitting Factory in NYC to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and appeared in Season 5 of "America's Got Talent." She has performed at The Great Dickens Christmas Fair as a member of Le Cancan Bijou and as a dancer in the Fezziwig's Warehouse Cast.
As the CEO of the Steele Dance Company, Steele provides artistic direction, storyline creation, rehearsal facilitation and choreographic services, as well as teaching the company's master classes. Steele has been teaching dance classes and private lessons since 1997. Recent projects have focused on remote dance and creating magic and connections to counter the isolation so many have experienced during the pandemic.
Steele achieved a double baccalaureate at the University of California at Berkeley in Theater, Dance & Performance Studies (emphasis in Dance) and Comparative Literature (emphasis in English and French). In 2008, Steele completed her Master of Fine Arts in Choreography at Mills College. She received an Associate's Degree in Liberal Arts from Monterey Peninsula College, where she began taking dance classes. She is registered with Yoga Alliance as an e-RYT500. Her written and concert theses focused on technology's impact on bodies and body image in a voyeuristic, commercialized modern culture.
Ken Delmar
Ken Delmar has taught Argentine Tango at Skyline College for over twenty years and created the Cuban Salsa and Afro Cuban Dance courses.
A native of San Francisco, Ken Delmar performed with numerous illustrious ballet companies, including the Joffrey Ballet, Netherlands Dance Theater, Stuttgart Ballet, and he toured the U.S. with the Bolshoi Ballet. Ken toured the world with five major dance companies dancing in the most beautiful theaters between San Francisco and the Baltic Sea. Ken worked for 10 years in Europe and five years in New York, and gave private performances for Rudolf Nureyev & Margot Fonteyn, and for Princess Grace of Monte Carlo at her palace.
Before coming to Skyline College, he taught for eight years at Stanford University and with Richard Gibson founded and directed the Western Ballet School and Company. Ken danced in two Tango productions Tango Fatal and Tango For You.
Ken Delmar studied under Harold Christensen and Roberta Meyer at the San Francisco Ballet School. At the age of 13, he became the protégé of Richard Gibson. During his teenage years, he was the principal dancer with the Peninsula Ballet Theater and “the wunderkind” of the Bay Area. Ken was a scholarship student at the School of American Ballet in New York and the Ford Foundation funded for his lessons and numerous trips to New York.
ATER Balletto, Italy
Makarova and Company, New York
Netherlands Dance Theater, Netherlands
Joffrey Ballet, New York
National Ballet of Holland, Netherlands
Stuttgart Ballet, Germany
Abigail Keyes
Abigail Keyes is a dance educator, performer, and writer. Her research investigates the transmission, codification, and standardization of belly dance through the Salimpour method as a means for preserving and innovating the form while challenging orientalist conceptions and practices. She holds an MA in Dance Studies from Mills College, and is an authorized instructor of the highly acclaimed Jamila and Suhaila Salimpour Formats of Middle Eastern dance. She also holds a BA in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University, and worked as an intelligence analyst in Washington DC for eight years covering Iraq, Libya, and weapons proliferation. As an instructor, she believes in the potential of every student, and hopes to impart a greater understanding and love of movement through her courses.
Kevin Simmers
Kevin Simmers began dance training in Burlingame, CA at the Les Williams Dance studio where he studied Jazz and Ballet, with teachers Les Williams and Leslie Crockett. His studies continued at Peninsula Ballet Theater in San Mateo, CA under the direction of Richard Gibson, taking daily technique classes with Mr Gibson and Grace Doty, as well as Mens, Pas de Deluxe, Character, and Modern Dance with Welland Lathrop. Kevin also performed with the company under the Artistic Direction of both Richard Gibson and Anne Bena, dancing a diverse repertoire and featured roles in their annual production of The Nutcracker.
While training to be a professional dancer he attended San Francisco State University, after graduating with a Bachelors Degree in Art and a minor in Dance he headed for NYC. There he continued his training in Ballet with David Howard, Finis Jhung and with Maria Vegh and Margaret Swarthout at Harkness House (he would also work with them both at Marin Ballet in San Rafael, CA) and Modern Dance with Jose Limon.
As a soloist with the National Ballet of Ireland/Irish Ballet he toured the country extensively and opened the 1978 Dublin Theater Festival, at the Olympia Theater in the World Premier, Dance Version of John Milton Synges’ Playboy of the Western World with the Academy Award winning musical group The Chieftains. It would make its USA premier at City Center, NYC.
Kevin has been a guest artist with The Princeton Ballet, Cork Ballet, Marin Ballet, Forest Meadows Festival Ballet and was an artist in residence at Montalvo Center for the Arts in Saratoga, CA, dancing with Tioga Thunder Dance Theatre. He has worked with such diverse choreographers as Norbert Vesak, Stuart Sebastian, Leonide Massine, Ben Stevenson, Domy Reiter- Soffer, Joan Denise Moriarity, Peter Darell, Anne Bena, Job Saunders and Richard Gibson. He has been a featured dancer in productions of Unsinkable Molly Brown and Brigadoon at PCPA Solvang Theaterfest in Solvang, CA.
“Dance was always Theater for me’” Kevin says, “I decided that I wanted to open my mouth, so after auditioning and being accepted I attended The Drama Studio Londons’ - Actor Training Program in my early thirties.”
After graduating Mr. Simmers returned to the SFBA where he was cast as Pompei in Shakespeares Measure for Measure, the inaugural production of the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. As an original member of the company he would also play Grumio in Shakespeare’s Taming of Shrew and Jeriah Jip in Bertolt Brechts’ Mann its Mann. His acting career would include roles with the Marin Theater Company, seven plays with San Francisco Rep, Antenna Theater, California Conservatory Theater, Pacific Conservatory Theater, Stanford Actors Project, Julian Theater, Playwrights Festival, Shakespeare San Francisco and Producing Actors Ensemble for which he was a founding member and played the title role in George Buchners’ Woyzeck.
After a career as both a dancer and an actor Kevin returned to the University to further his education obtaining a Masters Degree in Drama from San Francisco State University where he was Awarded the Faculty Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in Direction. Kevin began his teaching career at Dennis Waynes Dancer School in NYC, teaching Adult Ballet, Ballet for Actors and Advanced Ballet. He has taught Ballet at Berkeley Conservatory of Ballet, and Movement and Voice at San Francisco State University and conducted Acting/ Movement Workshops (2001- 2018) at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. He also served as Rehearsal Coach for the summer productions of The Chaincourt Theater Company, that include Our Town, Golden Boy, Summer and Smoke,The Seven Year Itch, A Midsummer Nights Dream, The Scarecrow, The Last Mrs. Cheyney, The Cocktail Party. The Chaincourt Theatre Company is part of Goethe University’s Institut fur England-und Amerikastudien (IEAS) and is based in Frankfurt am Main.
Mr Simmers has been teaching at Skyline College for twenty-five years, teaching Jazz Dance, Dance 101, Aerobic Dance,Yoga,(certified by The San Francisco Yoga Foundation) Pilates, (certified by Balanced Body University) and Ballet. He also teaches Drama 200 201 202 and is the Faculty Advisor for the Skyline Theater Club and has directed plays for the club which include, The Laramie Project, You Can’t Take It With You, Time of Your Life, Middletown, The Match Maker, All My Sons, The Spoon River Project and Telling Stories- An Evening of Monologues, Scenes and A Song or Two 1 to17, benefit performances for the Skyline Theater Club.
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