Performing Arts BA (Hons)

De Montfort University

DMU has a long-established reputation as a Centre for Excellence in Performance Arts, which reflects our commitment to innovative and excellent teaching and learning. This course incorporates many contemporary arts disciplines, such as acting, dance, voice, physical theatre, music theatre, sound design and digital video. It celebrates and investigates the possibilities of live and digital arts in a range of performance contexts, from the traditional to the avant-garde.

With a focus on making performance, you can tailor your studies across three themes – contemporary performance, digital performance or applied arts and education. You will be supported to develop as an innovative artist able to create, perform and manage yourself, and others, within the national and international performing arts industries. 

Our graduates are dynamic, creative practitioners who can take a piece of performance right through from creative brief to public performance – skills that are attractive to potential employers. As a graduate, you will be equipped with a high level of resilience and a range of skills and experience that will enable you to respond flexibly to the changing landscape of the sector.

Key features:

• You will study a range of topics such as physical theatre, dramatic performance, digital sound and film, site specific, and contemporary music theatre in an intensive project-based approach mirroring the performing arts industry.

• Graduates have gone on to pursue a variety of roles and performance opportunities, including teaching and training, projects at Curve theatre and Audience of the Future – collaborative research and development with the intention of delivering an immersive live performance on multiple platforms.

• Boost your exposure in the field through our excellent industry links. Recent internationally renowned visiting companies have included Frantic Assembly, Imitating the Dog and Gecko.

• Real-life experience is offered though a placement module in your final year, where you can gain valuable knowledge with a professional organisation and develop your artistic voice by building a range of practical skills.

• DMU is recognised as a Centre for Excellence in Performance Arts, with great facilities providing specialist studios and rehearsal spaces designed specifically for performance learning activities. Access digital video cameras, sound recording equipment and editing suites to enhance and perfect your craft.

• DMU is ranked in the top three for Performing Arts courses in the UK for graduate prospects, according to the Complete University Guide 2021.

• Take part in our international experience programme, DMU Global. Students have benefited from trips to the Utrecht Spring Dance and Theatre Festival in the Netherlands, a performing artist’s residency in Valletta, Malta, and the opportunity to visit creative spaces and perform in New York.

• Benefit from the cutting edge research and practice carried out by Performing Arts staff in the Research Institute of Drama, Dance and Performance Studies Research.