The Common Moment at Wesleyan

The Common Moment has become a Wesleyan Arrival Week tradition for incoming students—an immediate and joyous introduction to the University. This all-class collaborative dance experience is designed to foster a shared space of inquiry, essential community-building, and communication across differences in a space of possibility and imagination. 

The Common Moment is an opportunity for new students to get out of their heads and into their bodies during their first days on campus, feeling and sensing the world around them through dance as they reflect on the kind of community they want to create and be a part of during their time at Wesleyan. 

“A lot of institutions do a common reading for all first year students who are coming in to have a grounding in a shared intellectual experience in some ways, but we also have this embodied experience that everyone shares," says Nicole Stanton, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. 

Students, regardless of their prior experience, are split into groups and led by Dance Department faculty through diverse world dance traditions, including West African, Afro-Brazilian samba, South Asian-inspired global aesthetics, and classic social line dances like The Hustle. 

“The Common Moment is an opportunity for the freshman class to come together as a cohort to learn about who they are through their bodies,” says Iddi Saaka, Douglas J. and Midge Bowen Bennet Associate Professor of Dance. And as Patricia Beaman, University Professor of Dance adds, “anyone can and should enter into it and feel wholly welcome and safe–it’s an egalitarian arena, and by fostering a non-hierarchical atmosphere, students discover their personal potential, and often find their own voice through making dances.” 

The structure of the Common Moment takes the ideals of a liberal arts education—including intellectual freedom and collaboration—and grounds them in a collective, physical experience. 

As former participant, Visiting Instructor of Dance and Center for Prison Education Program Coordinator Shirley Sullivan ’21 recalls, the Common Moment helps alleviate the tensions of a new environment. “Having everyone come together to learn a dance, something so many people feel insecure doing, and feeling free to enjoy the moment while in the mass of students around me felt liberating,” Sullivan says.

“Doing this kind of work, providing students with these kinds of opportunities is important because we are inviting students to actually practice the world as they want to see it,” says Stanton. This helps students embody how they can collaborate and work with peers from different experiences and backgrounds, and practice being in community.  

The Common Moment is rigorous, diverse, and rooted in the philosophy that the arts are essential to being agents of change in the world. “At Wesleyan, we believe in the power of the arts as a way of knowing the world, a way of understanding the world, and a way of changing the world,” says Stanton. The event establishes a culture of collective possibility and engagement, launching each new Wesleyan class into a multi-year journey of shared inquiry.