USC Kaufman’s First Graduates Set a New Bar for Dance

When the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance’s first freshmen arrived on campus in 2015, they knew they’d be setting the bar for generations of dancers to follow. This May, these students will graduate and pursue dreams in choreography, performance and beyond.

Here are a few highlights from the school’s pioneering Class of 2019.

[iframe src=”https://e.infogram.com/63b828b7-3729-47e3-848b-dde6a366bd08?src=embed” title=”Kaufman – 1st Graduating Class” width=”703″ height=”1396″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ style=”border:none;” allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen”][/iframe]

It wasn’t easy to pick out the members of the first class. Jodie Gates, vice dean at USC Kaufman, had the difficult task of whittling down the large number of applicants. In the end, Gates and the admission committee carefully selected the dance majors in the same way they’d put together a professional dance company: They looked at them as a group.

“It’s an incredibly diverse class full of hybrid dance artists,” Gates says, “from aspiring choreographers to hip-hop, from ballet to contemporary dancers.

“The backgrounds of the students vary, which is exactly what we wanted.”