Tisch Special Programs

The number of students studying abroad is on the rise.

The Washington Square News reports today that applications to NYU's 10 study abroad sites increased 8 percent this year. Read the article.

Go global! Tisch School of the Arts also has study abroad programs in five locations this spring, which are open to all NYU students : Dublin, Havana, Johannesburg, London, and Prague.

Tisch spring study abroad applications are due October 12. Apply now or get started at the Tisch Special Programs Open House.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced in her New York University commencement address on May 13 that funding for the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program will increase by more than 40 percent.

Photo courtesy of CNBC

"You know, study abroad is like spring training for this century. It helps you develop the fundamentals, the teamwork, and the determination to succeed. And we want more American students to have that opportunity," Secretary Clinton said last week.

The Gilman Scholarships provide funding for undergraduate students seeking to study abroad for a semester or a full year. Additional funding is offered to students who wish to study in 'non-traditional' study abroad places. Read more about this scholarship on the Web site for the U.S. Department of State.

Secretary Clinton received an honorary degree at the 177th NYU Commencement held at Yankee Stadium. Watch Secretary Clinton's video for her full commencement address.

New York University Tisch School of the Arts offers semester-long fall and spring study abroad programs for all undergraduate NYU and visiting students. Short-term summer undergraduate and graduate programs are also available.

Want to get the inside scoop on a semester in Shanghai with Tisch? Check out student Ryann Weir's blog from her fall 2008 semester in China. Here's a sample and link to her blog:

Last night was our big Chinese Opera performance. It occurs to me that I haven't written much- or anything- about Chinese Opera even though it's the primary focus of my studies in China. I guess I haven't written about it mostly because it's very strange to describe. As I'm sure you can observe, it's not much like the western theater we know.

The singing is often high-pitched, nasal, shrill- frankly, difficult to listen to. The movement- all of it from your eye balls to your toes- is highly controlled and calculated. It's choreographed to the second in time with music.

But the most interesting thing, i think, is the design. Everything is extremely ornate. The make-up takes an hour at least to apply and each piece of hair is applied individually to your head. There's a photograph of it above, I think. Anyhow, they take chunks of hair and soak them in sap and then glue them down to your head. After that, they put on a face tightener. Those are the white straps in the picture. They're excruciatingly tight pieces of tape that are meant to stretch your face. They pain is incredible. Our teacher told us that when she trained as a little girl, the first time they tried on the face tighteners, all of the students began to vomit. It's really, really awful. But it looks pretty cool.

I'm fairly certain that I have no future in Chinese Opera but at the end of the semester, I have a lot to take away from studying it. Telling a simple story can be incredibly complicated, it's often nice to have a right and wrong answer, if you have to, you can assimilate to almost anything, and everywhere you go, people are mostly the same but the subtle differences of mannerisms and language and perspective are the most interesting parts.

Scott Tanzer, a Tisch drama student, spent the fall 2007 semester studying Chinese Opera Training at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. After an intense semester of training, Scott reflects on his training and his time in Shanghai and beyond.

1. In your own words, what is Chinese Opera Training?

Chinese Opera is an intense physically based movement class. While in actual Chinse Opera, there is usually a voice aspect to this art form, for our purposes of study, voice was impractical to learn. Our Chinese Opera class not only opened my eyes to another art from to which I had no prior exposure, but it also made me so much more physically aware of my body and the power that I have over it.

As I began the training I struggled with my flexibility and the many combinations we learned proved to be challenging, but by the time out final presentation rolled around I felt confident that I had become somewhat of a master at what I had learned. The movements we focused on are very specific and almost posed, so the work can be very tedious and painstaking, but we always had a great time in class. We learned combinations using swords and spears, and in one of favorite combinations, a boy was paired with a girl and we would fight: boys with a spear and girls with two swords.

Though at times I felt frustrated with my ability in the class the pay off in the end was great. I learned new thing about myself and I gained an intense appreciation for this incredible form of art. Our teachers were some of the kindest and most patient people I have ever met in my life. They truly want you to succeed and really made this course worthwhile.

Casey Crowley, a drama student at Tisch School of the Arts, studied Chinese Opera Training at the Shanghai Theatre Academy during the Fall 2007. Below is a look back at Casey's time in Shanghai with mentions of her trips throughout China and Tibet.

People hear the word "opera" and they automatically think of Western Style operas with Western singing. Chinese Opera could hardly be more different. There are two main types of Chinese Opera. Those that favor singing and those that favor the martial arts. Since the singing style of Chinese Opera is a. in chinese, b. difficult for the Western ear to get used to, and c. extremely difficult for an English speaker to learn (especially when your teachers don't speak English), we focused on the martial arts. Warm Ups consisted of high kicks into the air and special Chinese Opera "walks." We all came out of that class more flexible (and by more flexible, I mean we were putting our legs up in the splits against a wall) than when we went in. We learned the basic movements of different characters and then progressed to certain choreography for those characters. The class was separated by gender with the boys and girls learning different choreography. We did, however, get a chance to perform a routine together where the girls danced with two long knives and the boys had spears. The relationship between student and teacher also progressed dramatically from September (where our teacher, Linda Lao Shi, would shout "yan jing, shining eyes") to Decmeber (when we were all capable of carrying on conversations in Chinese. It is very clear to me that to become a master of Chinese Opera requires years and years of training (this was always especially evident when little 9-year olds would outperform us and there were boys next door practicing back hand-springs so fast they were staying in place), but the introduction to Chinese Opera has definitely sparked an interest in Chinese dance that may one day take me back to Shanghai.