The Department of Directing and Choreography at Ivan Franko University of Lviv is well known in the scientific, pedagogical, creative and performing cultural and artistic circles both in Ukraine and abroad.
The speciality “Directing” was launched in 2002 on the initiative of the Rector of the University, Professor Ivan Vakarchuk and with the support of the Faculty of Philology. In 2010, People’s Artist of Ukraine Oleh Petryk initiated the creation of higher choreographic education at the Department, selected highly qualified teaching staff, most of whom are Honoured and People’s Artists, candidates and doctors of sciences. The educational process is supplemented with first-class material and technical base. The educational and professional levels “Bachelor”, “Master” and scientific level “Doctor of Philosophy” are fully licensed.
About 150 students from the majority of Ukrainian regions study at the department. The graduates of the department work as directors, teachers, tutors, choreographers and artists in leading collectives in Ukraine and abroad.
While studying, students can simultaneously improve their skills in practice by participating in the professional teams of the department: Ukrainian Ballet Theatre “Premiere” (director O. Petryk), Ukrainian Ballet Theatre “Premiere-Folk” (director N. Kiptilova) , Contemporary Dance Laboratory (director Y. Hrytsenko) and the Student Ballet Theatre (director O. Lan). Over the past 5 years, our students and teachers have staged more than 350 performances in Europe and Asia. The student scientific club (lead by O. Plahotniuk) is actively working.
A milestone for Ukrainian choreography was the approval of the Passport of scientific specialty 17.00.08 “Choreographic Art” by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine in 2014, developed by teachers O. Petryk and D. Sharikov. Based on this, a graduate school in choreography was created at the department, the first one in Ukrainian history and so far the only one.