In 2024, Katharina Strenge attended Fordham’s spring open house session as a high school senior. She hoped to settle an urgent matter on her mind as the deadline to commit to college loomed: Did Fordham offer a dance minor?

Professor Andrew H. Clark, the co-director of the Ailey-Fordham Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) program, was used to hearing this question from prospective students. In the past, the answer often disappointed. Despite the university’s renowned BFA program in partnership with The Ailey School, Fordham did not have an official minor that provided similar opportunities to move, choreograph and perform.    

When asked that day, Clark was proud to reply in the affirmative. 

“I was like, ‘It’s been approved by the councils, we’re going,’” Clark said. 

Strenge, Gabelli School of Business at Lincoln Center (GSBLC) ’28, committed to Fordham after the open house where she first met Clark, passing up a major scholarship to a different school.

“The minor was the deciding factor,” Strenge said. “Being told that, (I) was like, ‘Oh yeah, then I’ll go to Fordham instead.’”

“A dance minor is maybe a beautiful way of dealing with that grieving process and staying connected to something that is so meaningful.” Andrew H. Clark, Professor and Co-Director of the Ailey-Fordham BFA Program

Then in July, Clark received a call informing him that the program was on hold.

Fordham University President Tania Tetlow, who took office in 2022, had initiated a reevaluation of Fordham’s Memorandum of Understanding with The Ailey School. New university presidents are obligated to survey their financial arrangements and external partnerships, and the BFA program falls squarely into both categories. The directive was passed through the Office of the Provost and then on to Laura Auricchio, the Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) dean at the time.

The resulting closed-door negotiations have continued for more than two years. The minor is off the table until a new agreement is reached between the two institutions.

The news brought the project’s long-building momentum to a halt and upended Strenge’s plans, among other non-dance majors expecting to pursue a dance minor.  

Since the inception of the BFA in 1998, Fordham students have been allowed to take up to four non-major classes at The Ailey School. In his more than two decades of involvement with the program, Clark recognized “a desire among many students to have a much more robust and academically coherent type of relationship to dance.” 

Clark initiated the proposal for a dance minor in 2022, when he became the co-director of the BFA program at Fordham (the other co-director represents The Ailey School). He started pitching the idea to students and garnered sufficient support at both the Lincoln Center and Rose Hill campuses. 

Some who turned up at interest meetings were theatre majors seeking to build their skills as performers, while others were new to dance and looking for a formal way to explore their interests. Many of them were lifelong dancers who had pivoted to academic tracks and felt a sense of displaced passion.

“For those who decided to leave the conservatory route and give up dance as their full-time activity, there’s a grieving process,” Clark said. “A dance minor is maybe a beautiful way of dealing with that grieving process and staying connected to something that is so meaningful.”

In his research for the proposal, Clark found that Fordham was the only university among its “peer and aspirant” schools in New York City that did not offer a dance minor. 

At least one of the students who signed the minor proposal in support of its creation has already graduated; the rest are current seniors who will soon move on. 

Clark took those examples into account when drawing up what the program would look like at Fordham. He designed two tracks for students to choose from: “Performance/Choreography” and “Dance as a Cultural Form.” The minor would echo the major’s core requirements, including anatomy and kinesiology courses, as well as West African dance. 

Clark wanted to honor the university’s partnership with The Ailey School by centering the Black American dance tradition in the proposed curriculum, thereby elevating students’ awareness of the art form as a reflection of social and cultural history. 

The 19-page proposal for the minor underwent review by deans and faculty members. It was then submitted for formal consideration and was approved by the FCLC Council, the Fordham College at Rose Hill Council and the Arts and Sciences Council. The Ailey School also supported the motion.

According to Clark, “it was done, it was over, it was in the bulletin.”

Then came that call in July. 

In a statement to The Observer, Vice Provost for Administration Ellen Fahey-Smith said that Fordham “maintain(s) an incredibly strong and productive partnership with our Lincoln Center neighbor” and is “committed to bringing the approved dance minor to fruition,” but did not disclose any details about the ongoing negotiations or when they are expected to resolve.

Clark, who is not involved with the negotiations, said he wished he and the other co-director for the BFA program were in the room.

“We have contact with the dancers and the students. We can think about their interests a little bit more readily than the other people,” Clark said. 

Strenge started dancing when she was two years old. Growing up in a suburb outside of Boston, she spent countless hours in the studio preparing for regional competition circuits that took her to nationals as a teen. When considering next steps after high school, she knew she was too injury-prone to continue dancing as intensely. But the thought of stepping away altogether was unfathomable — something she compared to “losing a limb.” 

Strenge said that her mother cried tears of joy at the open house thinking that her daughter would get to dance at a pre-professional level while pursuing a business degree.

Once on campus, Strenge dove headfirst into dance. After auditioning to be in the major classes alongside BFA students, she took ballet three times a week and Horton technique twice a week in addition to her regular coursework. She even took content courses normally exclusive to BFA students: “Music for Dancers” and “Black Traditions in American Dance.” 

The credits Strenge earned only count as electives, excluding those that fulfilled her fine arts requirement for the university-wide liberal arts core. 

With no definitive end to the negotiations in sight, it is unlikely Strenge will complete a formalized dance minor curriculum at Fordham within the time she has left. 

“I would know inside … that I achieved something else. But it would be a shame to see all that work and all the extra time and effort I’m putting in not really pay off.” Katharina Strenge, GSBLC ’28

She would not be the first to leave empty-handed. At least one of the students who signed the minor proposal in support of its creation has already graduated; the rest are current seniors who will soon move on. 

Strenge said that just getting to dance at The Ailey School is an advantage in the performing arts world. But walking across the graduation stage without recognition of her rigorous training would be deeply disappointing — especially given that it was the reason she chose Fordham in the first place.

“I would know inside … that I achieved something else,” Strenge said. “But it would be a shame to see all that work and all the extra time and effort I’m putting in not really pay off.” 

Still, Strenge remains committed to her pursuit. This semester, she is one of five students in the first choreography class offered at FCLC, which meets weekly in Franny’s Space, the multi-use rehearsal room in the Visual Arts wing. The class is taught by a graduate of the BFA program who is now a professional dancer and choreographer.

Clark visited the class a few weeks ago. He watched the students work through choreography in different styles of movement. 

“I walk into this class and you have five students who are really consciously thinking about what it means to move their bodies … thinking about different traditions, how movements are inscribed in different histories, what the relationship to other bodies is,” Clark said. “(To) see that down in Franny’s Space makes me really happy.” 

Fordham has ramped up science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives.

Clark said it was beautiful to witness, “particularly in this era of ChatGPT.” 

Fordham has ramped up science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives. Last year, the university made headlines for receiving its largest private gift in history — $100 million that will fund a new STEM building on the Rose Hill campus — and recently received a $1 million gift for AI research and innovation. 

Even Fordham’s new public image, courtesy of a divisive rebrand, signaled a shift in the Jesuit identity that has guided the university from its inception. Almost 2,000 petition signatories denounced the sleek look in a call to “change back Fordham’s corporatized logo to its true emblem.” 

In the dance minor proposal, Clark included quotes about the historic significance of the arts to a Jesuit higher education. He highlighted the salient aspects of the curriculum in comparison to any possible distracting effects of emerging technologies such as AI. 

“We’re going to need to have things that bring meaning in really substantive ways,” Clark said. “I think dance is one of those.”

Clark is intent on realizing the program he envisioned, despite the lack of transparency around the protracted financial negotiations that have kept it on ice. He said that at the open house this fall, the most frequently asked question at his table was whether the university had a dance minor. 

Following a direction from the head of admissions (who is part of the negotiations), Clark told prospective students it was on hold.

“I think everyone wants it,” he said. “But we need someone to close the deal.”