Members of the San Francisco State University Student Dance Union held a dance protest on Thursday — not to perform, but to protest for the College of Liberal and Creative Arts to invest in the dance program. 

“In practice and in theory, our department is dying,” said Clarissa Saunders, president of the SDU.

The SDU, supported by friends, family and alumni from the dance community, led a march from the Creative Arts Building to Marcus Hall to protest to the dean of the LCA, Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo. They brought forth three central demands: approve the search for a second tenure-track faculty member, put technique classes back on the schedule and put performances back into the curriculum. 

Kamilla Guzman Arguello, treasurer for the SDU, said that having another full-time faculty member who focuses on technique is essential. 

“Our department currently has two emergency hires that were previous lecture faculty that got let go,” Arguello said. “Having to rehire lecture faculty speaks volumes for how significant and crucial it is to have a full-time faculty member specializing in dance technique.” 

Jade Van Tuyl, a member of the SDU, echoed Arguello’s statement. 

“It is impossible to develop as a dancer, an artist, without technique classes,” Van Tuyl said. “SFSU used to have a thriving dance community and program not only because of the informative theory classes provided, but also because of the real rigorous technique classes as well. Theory and technique need each other to make a three-dimensional artist.” 

The department’s sole tenure-track faculty member, Yutian Wong, teaches dance history and composition but not technique. This semester, the only technique class offered is Afro-fusion dance technique I/II. The remaining five classes are composition or theory based, with half taught either online or asynchronous. 

Elijah Su, a fourth-year student, who is double majoring in theatre arts and dance, said that he is “in so much turmoil right now.” 

“I mainly focused on the Afro-fusion class because it’s the only technique class that’s been offered for the past two semesters,” Su said. 

Su has had to take substitutions every semester to fulfill requirements for dance courses, such as kinesiology to substitute for dance medicine. 

“It’s ridiculous to me that a student can be enrolled in every single dance class and it still doesn’t fulfill requirements,” Su said. 

Mayuu Kashimura, a political science and dance alum, participated in the protest in solidarity with current students. 

“Students who are already paying full-time, increasingly expensive tuition are forced to look elsewhere outside of this school to learn the foundational dance technique that they need to succeed in a dance career, and I think that’s really setting up students to fail,” Kashimura said.

However, the dean said that dance isn’t the only humanities program in danger.

“We are trying really hard to figure out how we can preserve these disciplines here at SF State,” said Nwankwo. “The humanities are threatened nationally and internationally and funding is drawn from the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts], so the college needs to figure out how to sustain that.”  

The SDU called for the LCA to “take a risk and invest” in more classes and performances for the dance program in order to increase enrollment. Kashimura mentioned that students in unrelated majors want to take dance classes. 

“There’s still an interest in dance,” Kashimura said. “I’ve also talked to a lot of people who took a dance class for fun, and then they really fell in love with it and became a dance minor or major.” 

Charlotte Edge, a fourth-year child and adolescent development student, is enrolled in the dance aesthetics class. According to Edge, the course has 40 students, and 14 students are dance majors. 

“There’s a lot of community in this class,” Edge said. “I want to be an elementary school teacher, so it would be nice to integrate dance into being a teacher.” 

Despite the majority of the students in this class being non-dance majors, the course was “overflowing,” according to Madison Miller, event coordinator for the SDU. During the protest, speakers said that investing in the dance program could attract incoming and prospective students. 

Saunders spoke about her worries for incoming students. 

“The majority of the people here today are completely new to the SF State dance program, and as someone whose life was completely changed and turned around by this program, it breaks my heart that these students might not have that experience,” Saunders said. 

Kashimura also recalled her experience in the dance program at the start of the department’s rapid decline in course cuts. She took a jazz class in Spring 2024 for the first time and was excited to take the next course. But then the professor was not hired back, and the class was not offered again.

“It sucks to fall in love with this art form and expect that you can continue building that technique, building that knowledge, and then be told you can’t anymore,” Kashimura said. 

The third demand to add performances back into the curriculum comes from SDU’s belief that performances are a way to showcase the dancers’ skills and put their name out. Additionally, shows are critical to attracting students. 

“It allows us to not only showcase our pride for our school and raise money for our department, but it also allows dancers to get their name out, build portfolios and get potential jobs,” Miller said. “We gain our careers by showcasing our knowledge.” 

Earlier this May, the university’s rebranding led to banners and posters with slogans such as  “Your future feels brighter here” and “A launch pad for the rest of your life” displayed around campus. Some dance students feel like those messages apply to them.

“We have not felt that and seeing those banners is honestly insulting to us, to see that so proudly everywhere around our school,” Miller said.

For some, the way the university portrays the success of visual and performing arts isn’t reflective of their experience. Students in the dance program don’t feel like the school is investing into their futures.

“It’s insulting to have ‘number 10 in visual and performing arts’ plastered on our website for incoming freshmen to believe that the arts are taking care of us here when they’re not,” said Van Tuyl. 

This story was originally published on GoldenGateXpress on September 5, 2025.