Ellington

In the morning, UW sophomore Natasha Krugmeier plays classical music from her speakers to get in the right mindset for ballet auditions. She practices an average of two hours a day outside class, preparing for programs in the summer that help her develop her technique.

She is part of a small group of dance majors at the UW. Other fine-arts students include those in the School of Art, School of Drama, and School of Music. What distinguishes these students, senior Bobbin Ramsey said, is the passion they have for their discipline.

“There’s no way to know if you’re going to be successful at all,” said Ramsey, a drama major who aspires to be a director. “There’s a lot of people out there who are never going to be ‘successful’ just because it’s a competitive industry. … You’re taking a big risk. Making that choice is what sets us apart.”

The motivation

While an arts major is not always required for careers in the fine arts, where talent is the main prerequisite, School of Music Admissions Coordinator Jenni Cole said musicians who want performance careers should major in music in order to develop their talent. The admissions rate for the UW music program is generally about 40 percent, and 171 students are currently enrolled to receive either a Bachelor of Music or Bachelor of Arts.

“It’s not for the faint of heart,” Cole said about the music major. “It is for a very dedicated, very talented group of students.”

Both Krugmeier and Ramsey said they were looking to develop their skills and be competitive in their fields through education, which they hoped would broaden their knowledge and allow for more practice time.

Krugmeier began dancing at the age of 4, but it wasn’t until her junior year of high school, when she enrolled in a summer intensive ballet program, that she realized she wanted it to be a lifelong career. And it wasn’t until this year that she decided to declare a dance major.

“I came from a really small studio, where [dance] was mostly for fun,” she said. “I felt like [the summer program] would help me figure out if I really wanted to get serious about it. After I improved a lot over the summer, I figured if I actually worked hard, I could maybe do that.”

Last year, Krugmeier auditioned for the Joffrey Ballet School’s summer intensive program. The audition, it turned out, was also an audition for a year-long program. When she found out she was accepted, she seriously considered dropping out of the UW and discussed it with her parents.

In the end, she decided to stay to complete her four-year education.

“That’s kind of how I was raised,” she said. “Both my parents are teachers, and they’ve always put a pretty heavy emphasis on education. Even though they fully support whatever I want to do, I still kind of feel like I would like to get a degree.”

Choosing the UW

Cole said music majors who wish to perform as a career benefit from going to a public four-year university and getting an education. There are risks, though, including sustaining an injury like a broken finger, which could prevent a musician from ever playing again.

“Once their career is over, they don’t have a backup,” she said. “If you don’t have anything else that you could do, it’s going to be a bad situation.”

Getting a broad education, art history professor Marek Wieczorek said, helps develop well-rounded art students.

“Studying both humanities and the sciences can be an enriching experience for your artistic practice,” Wieczorek said.

Connecting the arts with other subjects, Cole said, helps students see them in a more complementary way.

“Music isn’t really in a vacuum,” Cole said. “There’s all sorts of connections that you can make with music and other things. You miss out on those connections, and you miss out on having other opportunities.”

Ramsey currently rehearses for the Undergraduate Theater Society’s (UTS) shows four hours a day, six days a week, and considers the drama community close.

“The community within the drama department is super tight,” she said. “We spend a lot of time with these people. I think the drama department just really fosters a community that stays really strong.”

The close-knit relationships she formed were partly due to the small classes and connections she’s made in the UTS, and partly because of the shared passion they have for theater.

Ramsey said one of the reasons drama students often choose to go to a four-year school rather than a theater-focused school is that they can study a wide range of aspects of theater production, rather than focusing on one concentration, as well as make strong connections with the drama community in both the undergraduate and graduate programs.

“They have the opportunity to spread their wings a little bit more, to experiment in a lot of different ways,” she said. “It helps you to create your own opportunities, and it helps you to make things happen for yourself, which is how it’s going to work in the real world.”

Outside high school, Ramsey had made a choice between pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Emerson College or a Bachelor of Arts at the UW. While her decision was largely based on finances, Ramsey said she was glad she ended up in a program that familiarized her with “every facet of theater.”

She added that what matters most in theater is talent and drive, and that choosing one’s education is for self-fulfillment as well as attaining career goals.

“If you go to Julliard, yeah, it’s going to look different. It’s going to be noted,” she said. “But if you went to some public school they’ve never heard of but still are very talented and rocked [the audition], it doesn’t matter where you came from.”

The commitment

Krugmeier was hesitant to jump into dance and only dance when she first entered college. She chose to major in environmental studies, but last year an injury made her realize how important dance was to her.

She dislocated her knee during one of her ballet classes. It prevented her from dancing for three weeks, and her movement was still limited months afterward. It only made her commitment to dance stronger.

“I realized I’m not that happy when I don’t dance,” she said.

After graduation, Ramsey hopes to work in Seattle for a year. She then plans on moving to New York with a group of friends to “see what is out there” and throw themselves into it.

“Why not now?” she said. “It’s better now [when] we’re more willing to live the starving-artist lifestyle.”

Regardless of the success she finds in a career, Ramsey plans to commit to theater.

“[Fine-arts majors] continue to do it day after day, even after the rejection, because their passion is so supreme,” Ramsey said. “Your passion for what you do is what keeps you going.”

Reach Features Editor Hayat Norimine at news@dailyuw.com.