DAA2105 – Modern Dance II is the second-level modern dance technique course, continuing from a beginning course into more demanding movement vocabulary, longer and more complex combinations, and a deeper engagement with the principles that distinguish modern dance from other forms. It is a studio course — you dance in every class meeting — typically carrying 2 credits with substantially more contact hours than the credit value suggests.
Modern dance is built on ideas that are almost the opposite of ballet's: where ballet works to conceal effort and defy gravity, modern technique uses weight, gravity, and the floor deliberately, and treats breath and the movement of the torso as sources of motion rather than as things to be stabilized. Level II is where those principles stop being described and start being embodied.
Content covers alignment and placement at greater depth; the moving spine — contraction and release, spiral, curve, and arch; breath as impulse; weight and gravity — falling, recovering, suspension, and rebound; floor work — descending, moving on the floor, and rising efficiently; center work — balances, tilts, and off-center movement; locomotor movement — travelling patterns, runs, leaps, and turns; elevation — jumps, landings, and safe absorption; dynamics and phrasing — effort qualities, accent, and texture; musicality — counts, phrasing, and moving against as well as with the music; longer combinations — retention, spatial accuracy, and performance; improvisation as a technique and compositional tool; use of space — level, direction, focus, and pathway; modern dance history and lineage — the major techniques and why they differ; conditioning and injury prevention; and performance skills — projection, focus, and presence.
Florida is an unusually strong market for commercial dance: Orlando's theme parks employ performers continuously and audition year-round, and the cruise industry hires heavily out of Florida ports. Both look for dancers who can move credibly across styles, which is why technique courses in more than one form are worth taking together rather than specializing early.
Worth stating precisely, because the numbering is often misread. In Florida's Statewide Course Numbering System the first digit denotes the year in which the course is normally offered — 1 for the first year, 2 for the second, 3 for the third, 4 for the fourth — not how well it transfers.
Separately from transfer, SCNS equivalency is keyed to the course number. A program that requires a specific number is satisfied by that number from any participating institution. A different number with similar content still transfers as credit, but the receiving program decides whether it fills that particular requirement or counts as elective credit — a curriculum question to settle with an advisor, not a barrier to the credit transferring.
The most common misconception, and correcting it changes how a student trains. Modern dance looks freer than ballet and is frequently assumed to be less technical. It is not. It is differently technical: it demands the same alignment, strength, and control, and adds skills ballet does not train — moving into and out of the floor safely, initiating movement from the torso, controlling a fall, and working with gravity rather than against it.
The practical implication for level II is that the floor work is where the difficulty is. Descending and rising efficiently, without bracing or bruising, requires strength through the core and a willingness to commit weight — and students who hedge, lowering themselves cautiously, actually make it harder and more dangerous than committing does. Expect the floor to be the part that takes longest, and expect the bruises early on to be normal.
Worth knowing too: there is no single modern technique. Graham is built on contraction and release, Limón on fall, rebound, and suspension, Cunningham on clarity and independence of spine and legs, Horton on strength and defined studies, and release-based work on efficiency and minimal tension. Your instructor teaches from a lineage; ask which, because it explains why the class is organized as it is.
A cultural note about studio training. Your instructor will correct your alignment and execution frequently and publicly. This is the teaching, not a judgment of you, and a student who receives many corrections is being taught rather than singled out.
Two habits follow. Apply a correction immediately and keep applying it — instructors notice whether a correction survives to the next class, and it is the clearest signal of a serious student. And a correction given to someone else applies to you too; experienced dancers listen to every correction in the room. If physical adjustment is uncomfortable for you, say so — instructors can correct verbally, and most now ask.
Practical safety content for a physical course, and it matters more at level II than at level I because the workload rises. Serious acute injuries are relatively rare; what actually happens is overuse — tendinitis, shin splints, stress reactions, and knee and lower back pain from repeating a movement with poor alignment.
The specific hazards: forcing turnout from the knees and feet instead of the hips, which is the classic cause of knee and ankle injury; hyperextending knees in a locked standing position; rolling in at the ankles; and working through sharp pain, which converts a small problem into a season-ending one. Warm up before dancing rather than stretching cold, hydrate seriously — a Florida studio in August is genuinely hot — and treat persistent pain as information rather than weakness. Report injuries to your instructor; a good one adapts what you do rather than telling you to push through.
The technical hurdle that persists into level II, where combinations get longer. Nearly all studio instruction is delivered in counts, and a student who cannot hear and hold the count will always be a half-beat behind no matter how well they execute the movement.
It is trainable and quickly. Practice counting along to music in eights until it is automatic; when learning a combination, learn the counts before you polish the movement; and mark the combination through with counts out loud rather than only dancing it full out. Modern adds a specific complication worth naming: choreography is often set against the music or to breath and phrase rather than to a steady count, which is disorienting at first. Learn the underlying count anyway — you need it before you can deliberately depart from it.
Essential before planning further dance coursework or transferring. Florida institutions use at least three parallel numbering families for the same technique progressions, and they do not agree on what level a course sits at:
Two consequences that matter. All of these are lower division, and 1000- and 2000-level courses transfer transparently between Florida public institutions — the differing level numbers reflect only which year an institution offers the course, not a transfer barrier. What the numbering does affect is curriculum: a program naming a specific number may count a different one as elective credit rather than toward that requirement.
And the C suffix signals nothing reliable in this prefix. Some institutions apply it to every technique course and others to none; Broward carries nearly all of its DAA technique courses with the C, while the queue numbering here carries some without. It does not distinguish studio from lecture — all of these are studio courses. For a general education fine-arts credit this rarely matters; for a student intending to transfer into a dance or musical theatre program it matters a great deal. Take the numbers your intended destination uses if you know them, and check credit values against your degree audit, since a requirement stated in credits clears differently depending on whether courses carry 2 or 3.
Generated September 1, 2026 · Updated September 1, 2026