INFORM
an annual publication of T H E O H I O S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y DE PA RT M E N T OF D A N C E
10/11 YEAR IN REVIEW
DEPARTMENT Executive Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Joseph E. Steinmetz Dean, Division of Arts and Humanities Mark Shanda Chair, Department of Dance Susan Van Pelt Petry Faculty Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Melanie Bales, Harmony Bench, Michael Kelly Bruce, David Covey, Melanye White Dixon, Karen Eliot, Candace Feck, Susan Hadley, Sheila Marion, Bebe Miller, Valarie Williams, Norah Zuniga Shaw Emeritus Faculty Helen P. Alkire, Karen A. Bell, Vera J. Blaine, Odette Blum, Angelika Gerbes, John Giffin, Louise Guthman, Ann Lilly, Vera Maletic, Victoria Uris, Lucy Venable Lecturers Blake Beardsley, Dale Beaver, Lindsay Caddle-LaPointe, Jenai Cutcher, Ashley Doyle-Lucas, Meghan Durham, Maria Glimcher, Laurel Hodory, Amy “Beaker” Prince, Lillian Skove, Olivier Tarpaga
Shayla Koester and Jennifer Meckley (L-R) rehearsing D. Sabela Grimes’ “Outward INflection.” Photo: Catherine Proctor.
DONORS July 2010–June 2011 Visiting Artists & Scholars José Alvarez, Anne Bluethenthal, Fatou Cisse, Ze’eva Cohen, Beth Corning, Flatié Dembélé, Ohad Fishof, Marcela Giesche, Sabela Grimes, Gary Harris, Angie Hauser, Shanelle Hickle-Moore, Darrell Jones, Opiyo Okach, Jimmy Ortiz, Andréya Ouamba, Kendra Portier, Hana van der Kolk, Talvin Wilks, Noa Zuk
Profound thanks to our major donors this year to our two new funds:
Musicians Cathi Aldrich, Susan Chess, Carlos Duran, Joe Krygier, Helen Kushnir, Eli Palnik, Michael Wall
Appreciation to all of our donors:
Professional Staff Melissa Bontempo, Susan Chess, Carrie Cox, Mary McMullen, Michael Wall
Helen P. Alkire Charles J. & Venetia Bramlage Roy M. Gottlieb John & Zoe Johnstone Susan & Ric Petry John Giffin & Victoria Uris Melissa & Ronald Weber $101-$1000 Keely Ayres Vickie Blaine Don & Lisa Brenner John Broadbent Michael Kelly Bruce Marlene Casini Susan Chess David Covey
Administrative Staff Odemaris Irizarry, Katherine Hale, Susan Heimburger, Dori Jenks, Jane Ledford-Adkins InForm Publication Editor: Maree ReMalia. Designer: Melissa Bontempo
Raise The Roof Campaign
Karen A. Bell Fund
over $100,000
$25,000
Louise B. Guthman
Lawrence Raymond Barnett Karen A. Bell Benjamin Gaylord Maiden
$25,000 Lucy Venable
$1,001-$5000
Candace Feck Sally & Clarence Greer Susan Hadley Jon Lowry Kindberg Diana Cochran Lanza Christian Laver Albert H. Leyerle Sheila Marion Mary Middeler Bebe Miller Barbara Lipton Pinchuk Amy Schmidt Paul & Sarah Smith Joseph E. & Sandy Steinmetz Valarie Williams
$51-$100
Carolyn Barton Robert Lee Booth Anne Hanson Burridge Michael Dante DeBois Marissa Corinne Farrell David B. Hollingsworth Katja Kolcio Kevin Olson Richard & Linda Orriss Jill & Avi Pandey Kathryn Staczek Rudolf Mark Wesley Shanda Carole Anita Simpson Larry R. Strimple Betsy Viktoria Strome Marilyn Louise Sweeney Beverly Guella Toomey
up to $50 Amy Kristin Arthur Dale & Carla Bruggeman Joey Ferrar Bryant Maj Leslie Stein Buerki Balinda Craig-Quijada Eva Dujardin Dale Julie Morgia Dechene Nancy Evelyn Deckard Nancy Sherk Dugan Sally Haltom Barbara Carole Hartley Diane Beth Jacobowitz Jill Jacobson-Bennett Kathryn Kildow Judith Zoble Kosstrin Gail Larned & Eric Marlow William Frank Panak Jane Cummons Reeves Ann L. Roush Lori & Edward Sachs Linn Alison Schlaifer Madeleine Scott Ronald Taylor Slayer M. Shelton Smith Jeanine Thompson Brandi Rose Trueblood John Twist Paul Gregory Walsh Hal & Melissa Wyss
FEATURED WORK VISITING ARTISTS DEPARTMENT NEWS CALENDAR
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Dear alumni, parent, student, supporter, friend of dance,
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As I write offices are being packed up, studio equipment is being inventoried, and our next two years in spaces across campus is being planned. Read about the “swing space” and the renovation of Sullivant Hall. With more news than ever to report, yet a reduction in budgets and an increasing desire to go green, “InForm” is now an online magazine. Our current up-ending may be stressful but I am confident that the moment–to–moment learning and revealing and inscribing and describing will continue to take place in meaningful ways regardless of facilities. During 2010-2011, our students studied in Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, and Taiwan. Faculty presented in Europe, Japan, and through Northern Africa and have several books and projects in the works. Read the stories.
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Students are reaching out in dynamic ways; for example Guerrilla Dance, a video documentary about Burkina Faso, and teaching dance for children with special needs. Our second Ph.D. completed her dissertation on Anna Sokolow; seven more Ph.D. candidates are in the pipeline doing research on ballet pedagogy, Portugeuse dance history, queer theory, and postmodern representation in Labanotation. Read their stories.
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Past chair and faculty member Karen Bell retired in December 2011 and with her husband Ben Maiden initiated a fund for supporting work that really makes a difference to populations in various community settings. You can add your voice to this vision and honor Karen. The Vickie Blaine fund continues to support student projects; honor Vickie and give a little. The Alkire, Becker, Pierson, and Woods scholarship funds support our students relieving some of the tuition burden. Please give to one or more of the funds. Our donor base has increased by 20% in the past five years, and we have raised $150,000 of a $500,000 goal for “Raise the Roof” portion of Sullivant renovation. Join me in continuing to ensure the high quality standards of this department. It is easy to give online or mail a check to us. See below for the fund numbers to use online or to write on your check to The Ohio State University. Thank you,
Susan Van Pelt Petry Chairperson, Department of Dance
Helen Alkire Scholarship Fund
Dance Building Fund 312772 Join in to Raise the Roof on the renovation of Sullivant Hall; naming opportunities!
The Ohio State University Department of Dance has moved to Pomerene Hall, Lincoln Tower and Drake Performance and Event Center to prepare for the upcoming renovation of Sullivant Hall! We will return to our building in summer 2013. Visit dance.osu. edu/raisetheroof to follow our progress.
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Swing Space Offices Find us online: 517 Lincoln Tower dance.osu.edu 1800 Cannon Drive, 5th floor Columbus, OH 43210 twitter.com/osudance facebook.com/osudance Permanent Address osudance.blogspot.com (Returning in 2013) Sullivant Hall Join our alumni community: 1813 N. High Street, facebook.com/groups/ Columbus, OH 43210 osudancealumni phone: 614-292-7977 fax: 614-292-0939 email: dance@osu.edu
Subscribe to our listserv: lists.service.ohio-state.edu/ mailman/listinfo/dance
600066 Stella Becker Scholarship Fund 600406 Rosalind Pierson Scholarship Fund 665802 Woods Dance Scholarship Fund 667854
Dance Special Projects Fund Support creative projects in dance; Opened in honor of Vera Blaine
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Department of Dance Fund 306319 Support the Department of Dance in research, outreach, globalization, and more
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giveto.osu.edu
Ellie Escosa rehearsing Susan Hadley's "Back, Jack." Photo: Catherine Proctor.
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Photo courtesy OSU Department of Theatre.
F E ATURED WORK
Drums Downtown: Elements by Amanda Platt, B.F.A. 2012
In this year’s Drums Downtown, Elements, there was a seamless collaboration between the School Of Music and Department of Dance at The Ohio State University. The theme dictated that performances draw from the elements of the earth: water, air, fire, wood, and metal. What resulted was a production that not only involved a wide variety of dancing styles and choreographic techniques, but also included musical performances with “instruments” as varied as a cactus, vacuum, and balloons.
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One of the most unique pieces was choreographed by Susan Van Pelt Petry to John Cage’s “Child of Tree.” The accompaniment was a musician playing a cactus. With no recorded version of the piece, Petry designed her dance solely on gestural movement. Cage gave musicians only a structure, which left room to experiment. Unfortunately for the dancers and Petry, they did not hear the music until the week before the show. By the magic of chance and play, the piece came together beautifully in both appearance and sound.
AIDA
by Maungsai Somboon, M.F.A. 2011 In fall of 2010, a group of students from the Department of Dance hiked across campus every evening to rehearse at the Drake. They left their home at Sullivant Hall, caught the bus at the Union and headed to the Department of Theatre to rehearse with their fellow cast-mates in the Elton John and Tim Rice musical, AIDA. The show was directed by Jimmy Bohr and choreographed by OSU Dance’s very own Susan Hadley. Two of the department’s dance students had leading roles – Loganne Bond as Nehebka and Maungsai Somboon as Mereb (pictured above), along with Cornelius Hubbard and Alyssa Nicholas as the exotic dancers and Elizabeth Durrenberg, Tyisha Nedd and Michelle Reid in the chorus of Egyptians and Nubians. The historic Southern Theatre in downtown Columbus served as the venue for the show, which ran for five performances. Hadley’s exciting, eclectic choreography stole the show with the dancers leaping through a giant mirror in “My Strongest Suit,” jumping with lovely ballon and rhythmically pulsing their bodies during “Dance of the Robe.” In concert with the flashy, entertaining Broadway dance numbers, her choreography also captured the more serene moments in “Basketheads” as the dancers
created beautiful silhouettes of Nubian women on the banks of the Nile River. During rehearsals, Hadley asked the performers to be a part of the creative process by improvising and crafting phrases that could be taught to fellow performers. The movement styles covered a broad range; from sixties girl-group step-touches to double pirouettes and jetés to grounded, percussive movement based on African dance forms. The dancers performed around elaborate, opulent sets by Brad Steinmetz in jewelcolored costumes by Shiree Houf and were beautifully lit by Jarod Wilson. Participating in a large-scale production on a major proscenium stage proved to be a fantastic experience for dance majors in both the undergraduate and graduate program at OSU. AIDA inspired many students from the Department of Dance to consider musical theatre as future performance opportunities.
"Drums of Winter" by John Luther Adams with choreography by Meghan Durham. Photo: Tyler Crea, courtesy School of Music.
Conversely, Susan Hadley restaged a piece, to Steve Reich’s “Music for Pieces of Wood.” As one of the performers in the piece I felt the complexity in the creation and performance of this work. Hadley built this piece just as Reich did for the claves; small cells of movement that get introduced one after another. To create the complex design, dancers had a set score just like the musicians and stood side-by-side with them while performing. Though learning and performing this piece was challenging, it was satisfying to successfully meet the demands of “correctly” performing the patterns.
I also performed in the finale, “Tectonic,” composed by Joseph Krygier and choreographed by Danté Brown and Giovanna Andolina. Wanting to close the show with a bang, the collaborators created a hip hop and tap blend, while musicians sparked some flares with colorful instruments and pyrotechnics. Since the final music came later in the process, choreography was created with bass rhythms and beats. The music added an additional layer to create an end product that was exciting in an unpredictable way. Other featured choreographers included Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Courtney Harris, Meghan Durham, and Erik Abbott-Main. Baker-Tarpaga created a work to the airy piece of music, “Sky Ghost,” by Russell Hartenberger. Completely transforming the feel of this sound, Baker-Tarpaga accentuated the harsh, aggressive nature that can exist in the wind, to contrast the light quality of air. Also in the realm of harsh and active movement, Meghan Durham choreographed a dance, to “Drums of Winter,” by John Luther Adams. In this work, Durham explored ways to create stark, dramatic images, as those of icebergs, and icebergs breaking apart. In “Splendid Wood,” by Courtney Harris, choreographer and dancers investigated the properties of wood, including its ability to expand and contract. Finally, a show about elements could not be without the use of fire. Thankfully, Abbott-Main’s flaming hulahoop solo brought the first act to an exciting close. As many choreographers, collaborators, and performers expressed, having the chance to work closely with dancers and musicians is a unique and exciting experience. While some pieces showcased dancers and musicians separately, others had the artists working sideby-side. Collectively, the sold out performances demonstrate that experimental and academically rewarding collaboration can also successfully spark popular appeal. Congratulations to all who were involved in this year’s production.
by Andre Morgan, B.F.A. 2012
Returning to campus for its annual showing, The Ohio State University’s Dance Uptown showcase brought with it a powerhouse combination of dance and music in the Wexner Center for the Arts’ Mershon Auditorium. This year, the show’s theme focused on music from African/Black-American artists. Michael Kelly Bruce’s “Hummingbird” symbolizes the “balancing of hope and despair” through movement that emphasizes the powerful force of the weighted and the criticality of the lifted. Based in the Hummingbird, a roadhouse on the famous Highway 61 just outside of Nashville, we are introduced to a lone woman who confronts her misfortune in order to find her own truth and hope. Backed by stirring voice of musician B.B. King, "Hummingbird" presents a group of people who, upon leaving the strife of their everyday lives, enter into a small, charged space to find solace in just being. The audience witnesses this transcendence that perfectly blends optimism and realism. Olivier Tarpaga’s “L’Ombre du Silence” roots itself in abstract exploration. Tarpaga’s focus is to find meaning that is “deeper than the movement” in order to discover all of the happenings that occur outside of the corporeal self. Also, a driving force is Tarpaga on the djembe accompanied by musicians Flatié Dembélé and Michael Wall. The music and movement meld together and flow between percussive and sustained elements. Large set pieces designed by Nicole Bauguss contribute to the visual complexity of the dance. However, these influences serve more as vessels to guide the dancers and the audience into a new realm of interaction.
D. Sabela Grimes’ “Outward INflection” arises from the partnership between choreographer and dancers. The term “smear,” used to mean subtle movement that focuses more on the inner self as a reflection of the outer self, takes the participant out of the “dancer mindset” and places them on a more cerebral track as they guide themselves in and out of the phenomena of interaction and the resulting “intra-action,” or the self-exploration of oneself. While the movement encompasses a wide-range of hip-hop styles, the movement only serves as a catalyst for the mover’s self-expression, with the piece creating its own characterization from beginning to end.
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Dance Uptown 2011: A Special Spectacle
Susan Hadley’s “Back, Jack” melds a powerful message and humor in a way that would make Charles Weidman proud. Set to the songs of 60’s girl groups such as the Chiffons, Leslie Gore, and the Shangri-Las, “Back, Jack” explores the early fits and starts of feminism in a way that does not lose the light-hearted giddiness of the era. Female dancers adorned with “twelve to fourteen inch blonde beehive wigs” that in no way hide the drama of the hairstyles of the 60s (they even light up), turn them into multipurpose tools through the length of the piece. However, yelling its way through the comical veneer of the piece is the voice of all women demanding their male counterparts to “Get out of my way and listen!” In a two-hour show, Dance Uptown takes viewers, catapults them into four completely different and exciting worlds of entertainment while broadening their perceptions.
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Watch Dance Uptown trailer videos online.
(L) "Back, Jack" by Susan Hadley (R) "“L'Ombre du Silence" by Olivier Tarpaga Photos: Catherine Proctor. More photos of Dance Uptown 2011 are located on the front and back cover.
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F E ATURED WORK
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reinvigorated this Romantic-era production to explore gender transgression, queer identity, and feminist perspectives. Funds provided through the Alumni Grants for Graduate Research and Scholars supported collaborations with set designer, Nicole Bauguss, and costume designer, Michael J. Morris. Alejandra Jara’s M.F.A. project, “Passenger,” examined the impact of cultural living experiences based on travel and how those experiences informed her choreography and performance. As a point of departure, she was inspired by her questions about “being in transit.” Later, this resolved in connections made related to identity, relationships and the feelings associated with traveling. She was not talking about a country, or a specific culture, but about the stages people go through as human beings transferred to movement qualities and sensations. The creator used metaphor through movement qualities, space and relationships. Having bodies collapse, fall, be off balance, shake, struggle and float were the sustenance of the piece. For Jara, being in transit is a combination of so many things, such as, country, relationships, culture shock, memories, being vulnerable and encountering change; she feels that experiencing different situations is part of our lives and is what makes individuals who they are. Kristen Jeppsen Groves presented “[ME]thod” at The Ohio State University’s Spring Concert Here, Then, Us, and the Other at Sullivant Theatre from April 14-16, 2011. (R) "Passenger" by Alejandra Jara (M.F.A. 2011). As an emerging arts advocate, Jeppsen Groves Photo courtesy Alejandra Jara. combined the intricate configurations of policy processes with complex, athletic choreography On Monday, November 8, 2010, Lisa Ferrugia to intersect an unlikely combination of dance and policy processes. Her physically dynamic Atkinson presented a lecture/demonstration entitled This Physical Body is the Meeting Place piece explored various aspects of policy creations from the complex relationships of of Worlds. Examining the lyric possibilities and characters affecting policy decisions to the choreographic dimensions of the written and spoken word, the program combined an informal humorous and exposing nature of policy language. [ME]thod highlighted the art of choreography showing with a literary reading problem solving and negotiations through that showcased excerpts of dance and writing movement while seeking the embodied created by Ferrugia Atkinson. The lecture/ humanity behind political processes. demonstration took place in Sullivant Hall’s Studio 1, and was well-attended by both faculty In February, Betsy Miller presented her and students from multiple OSU departments. M.F.A. project, “Everyone Loves a Parade,”a contemporary recontextualization of the Courtney Harris, M.F.A. candidate and former dancer with the Houston Ballet, choreographed 1917 Ballets Russes production of Parade. “S(he) Sylph,” a contemporary re-imagination of Set to an edited version of the original score composed by Erik Satie, and featuring original the 1832 ballet, La Sylphide. Harris’ adaptation set design by OSU Department of Art M.F.A. investigated the complexities of narrative and candidate Zachary Podgorny, the piece offers a character development through modern and satirical and absurdist view of modern life balletic movement idioms. Joined by members and popular culture. Miller also premiered of the Royal Renegades, Central Ohio’s “Promises and Other Lies,” a theatrical joyride of premiere drag king troupe, Harris and her cast, chocolate-eating and cynicism wrapped up in including graduate students Erik Abbott-Main, physical humor. Veronica Dittman-Stanich, and Jessica Zeller, (L) “Gently between us" by Teoma Naccarato (M.F.A. 2011). Photo: Melissa Bontempo.
Montreal based artist Teoma Naccarato presents “Gently between us,” an interdisciplinary piece that explores emotional and physical intimacy, mediated via technology. By manipulating cameras onstage, the dancers connect and depart in flesh and video projection, negotiating geographical and felt distance. The project raises questions regarding bodily and virtual presence/ absence that permeate today’s reality of online communication and relationships. Samples of Naccarato’s past work are available at naccarato.org/dance
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After working with the SITI Company this summer, Maungsai Somboon was inspired to start rehearsals for his M.F.A. project. Ultimately titled "Yononaka: In This World of Ours," Somboon and his cast collaboratively created a 20-minute dance-theatre piece that was performed on February 3-5, 2011 in Sullivant Theatre. The piece integrated movement with text and characters and explored the personal landmarks in people’s lives that take place in concert with historical and current events. It
examined issues of race, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, loss and identity through dance and spoken word. The cast was comprised of six graduate students and four undergraduates including two dance majors and two students from the Department of Germanic Studies. The piece featured solos, duets and vignettes from different characters to a score by Oscarwinning composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, a clip from The Today Show, Madonna and Marianne Faithful.
On Monday, April 18 at 5pm, Mara Penrose presented a lecture/demonstration that summarized her investigations of large group performance. She explored the possibility of scores, both verbal and Labanotation, to structure and prescribe movement, the lecture included discussion of mass movement spectacles Penrose created during 2010-11 as well as excerpts from a 1930’s “movement choir” arranged by Albrecht Knust. Penrose’s research included organization of three public events with a core cast of eleven amateur dancers plus extras drawn from the core’s social network. Two of the performances were based on the historic movement choir, integrating Penrose’s investigations of notation scores, photographs and other documents held in Laban-related archives at Ohio State and in England; another, the “Arch Park Event” used word scores to organize a large group performance designed after a flash mob. Both projects took place primarily on the Ohio State campus, using social and situational elements of campus life as materials. Between 2010-2011, Maree ReMalia conducted quarterly rehearsal/labs with members of OSU Dance and the local community. Each lab resulted in a performance work. Her compositions of idiosyncratic, seemingly disparate elements emerged from improvisational structures used to awaken the responsive body. Studies in the Gaga movement language and her experiences at Moving on Center School for Participatory Arts greatly impacted her creative process. In her culminating thesis work she presented, “all the little things that are nearly them” featuring Lisa Dietz, Fiona Lundie and Abigail Zbikowski. Source materials were contributed by the public for the cast to investigate the processing of external information then note the distinct results in individual expressions [ mahiree.wordpress.com/mfa-projectsolo-input]. In an effort to make the evolution of the performance pieces accessible, she collaborated with Rachael Riggs Leyva, Michael J. Morris, Mara Penrose and Rashana Smith in the development of an archival website [ merrygogo.com].
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“[ME]thod" by Kristen Jeppsen Groves (M.F.A. 2011). Photo: Melissa Bontempo.
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Poised with Promise, B.F.A. Senior Projects of 2011 by Lisa Dietz, B.F.A. 2011
The graduating seniors of 2011 are poised not only to enter into the professional dance community but also to make lasting contributions and provide fresh perspectives. As they move on to make their marks in the world, their legacy still resonates here in Sullivant Hall with the performances, presentations and papers that made up their B.F.A. senior projects. Many projects culminated in the group senior concert, Updated Profiles. Self-exploration surfaced as a theme for three choreographers. Kiersten Williams began her choreographic process by asking two questions. What is identity? And who am I? Williams crafted this intrapersonal research into a solo and further refined her identity as a dance maker. “Chances are,” choreographed and performed by Indi Miller, examined race and gender through personal triumphs and struggles. Revisiting dance composition assignments, Miller contrasted vulnerability with strength and control with powerlessness. Sherrell Whitmire delved into habits and preferences in the studio to define her personal dance lineage. The resulting piece fused contemporary and African dance vocabularies and was accompanied by Maya Angelou’s spoken word piece, “Phenomenal Woman.” The myriad of methodologies and research questions explored in this concert was reflective of the wide scope of interests and talents of 2011’s seniors. Melissa Brenner’s “A Crowd is Not Company” focused on the tension between an individual and a group and used partnering, weight sharing and varied dynamics. A duet by Nicole Gordon centered on the unique bond and trials of an intimate relationship. A collaboration between musicians and dancers, headed by dance major, Giovanna Andolina, culminated in a piece featuring two tappers, a bassist and a drummer. Brittany Strine’s project, “Spirit: A Search through Bollywood Dance,” encapsulated her study of Bollywood dance culture. Her scholarly investigation took the form of a work performed in the senior show, a short documentary and a research paper.
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Loganne Bond, following Spring Informance. Photo: Melissa Bontempo.
Students explored new modes of dance making through the use of technology and social media. Kerry Sellers created a piece using the internet as rehearsal space. Her work, titled “elämä on vaikeaa,” used movement generated via “assignments” given to dancers over social media sharing sites such as YouTube and Facebook. Loganne Bond created a dance demonstrating her own personal social media presence and with others made mini dances based on status updates and tweets which were then distributed via social media outlets. These projects reflect the increasing role of technology in our culture and in the field of dance. “Everything All of the Time,” a multimedia performance by Stephanie Danyi, included live performance and video dance. Using video as a tool to exaggerate emotional distance and music by Radiohead, Danyi created a world in which the dancers were disconnected in their own minds. Another multimedia piece was performed by Michelle Maroon and choreographed by M.F.A. candidate Danté Brown. Images of Maroon covered in white paint and wearing a mask were projected while Maroon danced on stage. The piece explored the complexities of self-image while juxtaposing glamour and femininity with imperfection. The senior concert, Updated Profiles, was organized and produced by graduating senior Nicole Gross. Gross also contributed lighting design for several pieces and stage managed the entire show. Spearheading a project of this scope, she acquired invaluable practical skills and provided fellow seniors with the production details to make their artistic visions come alive.
Two seniors used their dance studies abroad as inspiration for their final projects. While at ImpulsTanz in Vienna, Austria, Katie Brock was struck by the differences and similarities among the international community and the relationships that were formed despite language barriers. Working with the performers, Brock considered dance as a language and means for communication, resulting in her piece “Cross-pollination.” During her travels to Seville, Spain, Louise Eberle studied Flamenco and performance as cultural identity. Upon returning to OSU she created a dance investigating her own identity, and how cultural values are presented through movement. Billed together as I and We, these two dances were performed at Via Vecchia Winery.
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After observing high school dance education programs throughout Ohio, Lisa Dietz submitted a research paper/proposal titled Emancipatory Dance Pedagogy: A New Curricular Model. The proposal was designed for secondary education settings initiating a dance curriculum. It presents a pilot dance program, addressing the challenges Dietz observed throughout her research while integrating progressive education principles.
Joanna Reed and Meredith Hurst also explored alternative performance spaces in creating a dance that took place in and throughout their Victorian Village home. Working with their cast of dancers, they created interiors: a site-specific dance performance. Small dances or “scenes” took place in the kitchen, two bedrooms, living room, attic and on the patio. Complete with operatic singing, the performance highlighted collaborations with many individuals to create a true interdisciplinary experience. The performance was followed two weeks later by a film screening of the show and a Q & A with Reed, Hurst and the other artists. In addition to versatile performers and accomplished choreographers, the class of 2011 also includes dance educators eager to expand on current pedagogy. Katelyn Pounds researched how a child’s race, mental capacity, and socioeconomic status shapes their exposure to and views of dance. Working with fourth through eighth graders in Cincinnati public schools and in Boone County School in Florence, Kentucky, Pounds prepared to shape children’s experiences with dance in transformative ways.
Photo: Catherine Proctor.
Tiffeny Bowersock bridged dance education with general education, creating a lesson centered on the solar system by using basic dance elements. Working with first graders in a private school, Bowersock observed and assessed the children’s progress in maintaining the material learned in both science and dance. Through her project she gained important insight in using dance as a kinesthetic tool for learning other core subjects.
Anson Relick researched the world of Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) and attended a week long intensive introductory course at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts as well as the annual American Dance Therapy Association conference in Brooklyn, New York. She concluded her project with a paper outlining the general principles of DMT. She discussed: body image, eating disorders and exercises used for these issues; Authentic Movement and its benefits; and how children and adolescents can benefit from DMT. All of this was shared in a presentation for the freshman dance majors. Daniel Holt’s project posed questions about the creation and proliferation of social norms. In his junior year Holt founded Guerrilla Dance, a playfully subversive group of dance improvisers who performed in unexpected venues around campus. Holt became interested in the larger social implications of this work and presented a lecture/demonstration discussing the experiences of the dancers as well as the perceptions of the observers. Arianna Williams’ senior project took contemporary dance to new heights, literally. Two of Williams’ passions –dance and skydiving– intersected, creating a unique new movement vocabulary. She began with inventing dance movement material in the sky. Later, in collaboration with dancers, she translated the airborne ideas to the studio. Williams brought her dancers skydiving, filmed the process and screened the results. She also choreographed a piece that was shown in the senior concert. This novel approach to creating dance is just another one of the many exciting ways 2011’s seniors are continuing to redefine contemporary dance and its related fields. These recent graduates are leaving the undergraduate program with the promise to be leaders, advocates and visionaries in the dance community and the projects they presented are indicative of the exciting prospects that await these new dance alumni.
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Entrepreneurial Students by Erin Carlisle Norton, M.F.A. 2013
The Department of Dance is home to many Graduate and Ph.D. students who continue to pursue professional opportunities alongside their academic studies. With a broad range of interests and experiences, these five choreographers have made unique contributions to the field of dance in Columbus and beyond. Abby Zbikowski was selected to participate in Philadelphia’s The New Festival as part of the Melanie Stewart Dance Theater residency program (2009-2010) for artists in the New York City and Philadelphia area. In her rehearsal process, Abby was interested in exploring audience, particularly the differences between the cultures of concert dance and rock music. Identifying with the “overlooked brilliance of pop culture” and incorporating it into choreographed dance, Abby developed many methods of exploration, focusing on music versus sound and the connection of performer to forms of music. She allowed the dancers to be in the audience, strapped amps to the dancers themselves, and had a live band play her original music. The final performance was at Philadelphia’s Drake Theater in June 2010 and was titled noiseVision, a take on Willy-Wonka vision, a cohesive title to house all the elements at play. The performance added components of mosh pit activity, melded with contemporary and social art forms, and the use of hard and soft contrasting sounds.
Erin Carlisle Norton, Artistic Director of the Chicago-based dance company The Moving Architects, presented Sacred Spaces in October 2010 at Columbus Dance Theater and in November 2010 at Brooklyn’s Chez Bushwick. The Columbus performance entailed three short works, including Erin’s disjointed
and bound solo “Standing Girl with Raised Right Elbow” that was inspired by the figure drawings of Egon Schiele. The featured work of the concert Sacred Spaces was originally performed in a chapel and has been restaged multiple times for traditional and site-specific venues. Erin developed the work alongside company members and composer Ian Hatcher as an in-depth study of the “history and architecture of religious spaces in correlation or contrast with the sacredness of our inner life.” Erin’s company, including OSU Alums Lauren Bisio and Laura Vinci de Vanegas, also taught master classes at the theater for members of the Columbus and Ohio State dance community.
In November 2010, Michael J. Morris performed a Butoh solo entitled “Re-Membering the Mountains” as part of The Love Art Laboratory’s The Purple Wedding to the Appalachian Mountains in Galbreath Chapel at Ohio University. The Love Art Laboratory conducts yearly performance art weddings focused on making the world a more tolerant, sustainable, and peaceful place. Michael’s solo was inspired by the organization and its values, alongside his research interests in Sexecology and Ecosexuality and the concurrent writings of Catriona Sandilands. Beginning the solo in a crawl, Michael found in his work a sense of deep grief and mourning. “The crawl is a struggle to stand, a struggle to be strong, to survive, to both escape and to push into what it means to be whole” he reflected. The crawling solo progressed with persistence to a solid standing moment of oneness. Michael also had the opportunity to collaborate in many aspects of the wedding and with other artists. Mair W. Culbreth collaborated with visual artist and builder Nicole Bauguss for the installation Domestic Matters: Distilling Geographies,
Identities, and Boundaries at the OSU Urban Arts Space in March 2011. Derived from images and experiences related to their Southern upbringings, the work addressed relocation and the need for community. In speaking about the evolution of the project, Mair explained “Coming from the south, many things about the practices of regular community are for need or necessity, so art is a way to make things beautiful rather than inaccessible.” With this in mind, the installation incorporated decontextualized found materials to create locations, such as a wallpapered covered climbing wall, living room, bedroom, and kitchen for cooking fried pies and bread. Creating this project was a true interchange and collaboration between creators and performers; every day tasks could take place re-imagined with intertwining memories. Throughout the month-long installation, the work continued to change and develop within the locational and thematic structure. Erik Abbott-Main was invited to choreograph a dance work alongside the Columbus Symphony Orchestra’s live performance of Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” at the Old Governor’s Mansion in Columbus in May 2011. The libretto score originally premiered in 1918 as a touring theatrical work with a Devil, Soldier and dancing Princess as primary characters. In Erik’s revival, he added two more devils into the mix, creating devils with feminine, butterfly and annoying flirtatious traits. Utilizing his choreographic twists of gesture, pantomime, and texture to the tango, waltz, and ragtime score, each character had its own physicality and recognizable movement quality. Erik was drawn to choreograph this work due to the fresh challenge of working with story and character, the historical connections to dance and theater history, and the opportunity to present it with live music in Columbus.
Photo: Victor Jouvert with permission from 651 ARTS.
taking flight
Photo courtesy Erik Abbott-Main.
F E ATURED WORK
FLY
by Arianna Williams, B.F.A. 2011 FLY: Five First Ladies of Dance is a piece consisting of five solos performed by Germaine Acogny, Carmen de Lavallade, Dianne McIntyre, Bebe Miller, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. With a call from producers 651 ARTS in Brooklyn, beginning in 2008, these ladies were brought together to create an evening of work that was greater than themselves in celebration of performances of the African Diaspora. The artists were chosen because of who they are and how they dance. These women are no strangers to the stage or to the art of dancemaking. Founder of Compagnie Jant-Bi and considered to be the “mother of contemporary African dance,” Germaine Acogny, brought her solo “Songbook Yaakaar (Facing Up to Hope),” a work co-choreographed with Pierre Doussaint commenting on the strength of women. Carmen de Lavallade, choreographer and former Alvin Ailey dancer, performed and co-created the solo “The Creation” with her husband Geoffrey Holder, on the existence of the world and how it came to be. The Broadway choreographer and founder of
Dance Diving:
Sounds in Motion Co., Dianne McIntyre (B.F.A. 1969), performed a dedication to her own dance mentors in her solo “If You Don’t Know.” Bebe Miller (M.A. 1975), director of the Bebe Miller Company and Professor at The Ohio State University, performed her piece “Rain” which examines the experience of struggle. Finally, the originator of Urban Bush Women, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, performed the solo “Bring ‘Em Home,” inspired by the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Although these solos cover a wide variety of topics, the concept for the concert is cohesive. These beautiful, inspiring women were brought together to show what exactly we do work for. The piece is more than just a history lesson or a display of movement sequences, it is geared to general audiences, more diverse than the common art enthusiasts, greater than the ideas of race, gender and age. Miller calls it “a connection of what art can do,” she explains that “looking at the gift of somebody’s work of art that they deeply understand says what art is for overtime. Now in its second year of touring, FLY: Five First Ladies of Dance certainly embodies and exemplifies this idea.
The Relationship Between Movement and Control and How it Differs in the Air Versus on the Ground
Around Town
by Daniel Holt, B.F.A. 2011 It is difficult to pin down the indeed-focused dance scene in Columbus. Two OSU Alums and prominent dance artists in the Columbus dance scene –Coco Loupe and Noelle Chun– both spoke on how several recent “informal showings and community jams have fostered the notion that dance can happen anywhere in Columbus,” continuing to support a “creative ethos” that pushes for underground work and the idea that “we are all prominent players in the dance scene.” If one took a stroll during Gallery Hop in summer 2010, entering Travonna Coffee House would have brought the smells of coffee and the swoosh of dancers’ feet against the wooden floor. In Autumn, Anna Sullivan and others held a meeting place for artists from all disciplines to come to Via Vecchia winery on a weekly basis, simply to experiment in a creative atmosphere. Gravity’s Ripple II, co-sponsored by the Dublin Arts Council and OhioDance in collaboration with both The Ohio State University Department of Dance and Ohio Department of Education Division of the Arts, was performed in September 2010. The event was yet another example of alternative dance created in the Columbus area. Julie Fox, a recent M.F.A. graduate from OSU, and the choreographer of GRII said it well, “In Columbus... specifically, I feel that there is a vibrant need for dance to reach beyond the traditional theatre walls.”
Fourth year B.F.A. student Arianna Williams' senior project involved the exploration of movement and movement concepts, specifically the intention of the movement versus the resulting movement and the variable of control. She was interested in discovering how these qualities were manifested and the interplay between movement executed in the air and movement done on the stage.
One found GRII on the side of a hill, flowing near the Scioto River at the hill’s base, and accented by one hundred and twenty feet worth of deep red fabric carried by the performers. The dance community looks to the green hills of Dublin or to the person walking next to her during Gallery Hop for dance locales. Columbus artists are not people who desire confinement within traditional dance spaces and GRII is clear evidence of this trend. Among many other artists such as Chun, Fox and Loupe is the group I started over a year ago called Guerrilla Dance. We go out on a regular basis, find an “everyday” place to dance and get right to it. This group is interested in a world without unnecessary boundaries of designated dance spaces; it is interested in dancing simply for the joy of it, as well as an opportunity to have an exchange with those who we walk by in daily circumstances. It is similar to sitting down at a nearby coffee house to read a cathartic book or sitting alongside someone for an afternoon chat. Guerrilla Dance is a group that directly connects with the current ethos of many local dance artists. Dance not as a means to an end, but both the means and the end: dance as a daily practice interwoven within the body/mind of the practitioner in addition to being a way to see and connect with another human being in an everyday manner.
The goal of the project was to identify the ways in which movement can exist in both the sky and on the ground and how the body works through movement concepts in these varying circumstances. This dancer is looking to find what happens when the body is pushed or pushes itself into an uncontrolled state and what physical expressions result. Can the same state be induced on the ground as in the air and how do the results relate?
making waves Williams began by attempting to enact material choreographed for the stage in the sky and then began using the results in theory with her dancers; her idea was to create the same effects with the body and relate the manifestations of the movements in the two arenas. In the rehearsal process she has tried to help her dancers find the same sensations she has felt in the sky in the first portion of the process, both through her own movement and in hopes of generating new movement.
The last step involved taking her dancers skydiving and then considering whether or not that changed the work they had already completed. Williams says her “ultimate goal is to reach audiences outside the dance world, to combine aspects of life so that this research is applicable to more than just me, or my department.” She wants to take the knowledge and creative exploration that Ohio State has given her and work towards a greater understanding of movement and the idea of working with her surroundings.
(ABOVE L to R) Emily Bass (B.F.A. 2007, Cum Laude, with distinction in Dance) Lindsay Caddle LaPointe (upside down), (M.F.A. 2010, Dance and Technology) and undergraduate dance major Amanda Platt. Photo courtesy Dublin Arts Council. (L) Photos courtesy Arianna Williams.
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earth shaking -
Quake and Shake
by Maree ReMalia, M.F.A. 2011
For the past two summers, I traveled to Israel to study the Gaga movement language. This unique training method has gained popularity in Israel where Batsheva Dance Company (BDC) offers classes for both trained dancers and non-professionals. Due to popular demand, gradually, it is being taught overseas. In Autumn 2010, I was thrilled to learn OSU’s Department of Dance would offer daily classes in this innovative practice.
The Foundation for Jewish Culture’s newlyestablished Schusterman Visiting Artists Program and Department of Dance professor Norah Zuniga Shaw arranged for Israeli artists Ohad Fishof and Noa Zuk to participate in a tenweek residency at Ohio State. The residency included creating new work, staging repertory and teaching the Gaga movement language.
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Under the artistic direction of Ohad Naharin, BDC’s evocative performances have received international acclaim, which are partially attributed to the company’s newlyadopted method of training in Naharin’s Gaga. Naharin developed descriptive vocabulary to accompany foundational movement explorations; quake, shake and float are examples of shared terminology amongst instructors while other directives are specific to the individual teacher. The discovery-based approach to movement increases an individual’s ability to research possibilities within the body by making oneself available for the unexpected. Fishof said that because Gaga is continually evolving, instructors are still considering ways to cater to the various functions that one finds in a dancing body. Among other things, for him, Gaga is about movement, change and awareness of a person’s strengths and limitations.
At the close of the quarter, OSU students from the Gaga classes described a feeling of total body integration. They ascribed this feeling to a focus on the sensation of the body in motion rather than appearance. Emeriti professor and former chair of the Department of Dance, Vickie Blaine, participated in the Gaga classes and said they were completely unlike her previous training. Rather than memorizing exercises and phrases that target specific body parts, she observed students participating in exploratory movement tasks within a continuous framework. She explained, “Ongoing guidance was provided by the participating instructor. From the beginning to the end of the class, the students were challenged to research the layered movement experience within an integrated body mind context.”
Rehearsal of Ohad Naharin's "Echad Mi Yodea" staged by Noa Zuk. Photo: Melissa Bontempo.
V IS ITI NG A R T IS T S & SCH O L ARS
In addition to leading Gaga classes, Fishof and Zuk conducted artist discussions in Columbus, Cleveland and New York. Fishof drew on his eclectic history as an international musician, performer, choreographer, and installation artist. He was a founding member of the Israeli pop group Nosei Hamigbaat and currently creates music with his band Bney Hama. Additionally, Fishof has maintained a longstanding relationship as a soundtrack designer with BDC. In his artist talk at OSU, he shared several commissioned works that spanned locations such as England, Israel and Japan. Each piece was imprinted with his distinct use of repetition and extended duration, blending high art with darkness and humor. Touring internationally with BDC for twelve years, Zuk honed her skills as a performer. She also developed a unique choreographic voice through BDC’s annual event, Dancers Workshop, where company members showcase their own work. When speaking about her choreography, she cites Ohad Naharin and Sharon Eyal as inspirations. She described Naharin as being “like a river,” in that he is always challenging the dancers and growing with them while rehearsing. Eyal’s creations bring audiences something fresh and new. To Zuk, the qualities performers bring to a dance and how those details take them to new places are more important than the strict compositional elements in the choreography itself. During the residency, her sentiments were evident in her staging of Naharin’s “Echad Mi Yodea” and her original trio, “Boxerman.” At OSU, both artists began new works ranging from video art to solo performance pieces. They expressed their gratitude for having time to focus on process and to experiment with material, rather than contending with the pressure of crafting a product. Reflecting on their teaching experience, Fishof and Zuk said in Tel Aviv they do not typically instruct the same students for each Gaga class, so it was a special opportunity to track the progress of one group for the duration of the residency.
d. Sabela Grimes Lecture/Demonstration. Photo: Melissa Bontempo.
Alumna Deborah Friedes Galili, M.F.A. 2006, traveled to Israel as a Fulbright Scholar and has since relocated to Tel Aviv. One of her initial draws to study in Israel was her appreciation of BDC’s compelling performances. Her extensive investigations resulted in developing the Dance In Israel website, authoring her book Contemporary Dance in Israel, performing in the work of Liora Ginat, teaching at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, mastering the Hebrew language and acting as registration coordinator for the Gaga Intensive. She has also been a regular student of Gaga. In her article, “Gaga: A Foreigner Explores Ohad Naharin’s Movement Language,” Friedes Galili describes the multi-layered tasks one experiences in class by posing the question, “Remember the first time someone asked you to pat your head while rubbing your belly, and your brain hurt from concentrating as you tried to master that coordination?” She explains that Gaga’s improvisational approach provides her “a heightened awareness and availability to move, an attention to restraint and exaggeration, a broader range of dynamics, and more–it [has] colored my dancing in other classes, rehearsals, and performances.” Since I first encountered Gaga in 2005, I have been convinced of its multiple benefits, both as a dance artist and in my navigation of the everyday. The visiting artists’ presence in the department reminded me how I feel when I am in Israel, taking daily Gaga classes and immersing myself in another culture. I walk with a sense of plenty of time, I carry my body with greater ease and rather than feeling the need to protectively numb my senses, I feel expansive and open. For the past three summers, people from twenty-five countries have made pilgrimages to Tel Aviv to participate in the Gaga Intensive. New York will host the inaugural sister event in August 2011 and the first official teacher training program is to begin in October 2011. The Foundation for Jewish Culture and OSU Dance can now be included on the list of initial facilitators for making the Gaga movement language accessible beyond the borders of Israel.
2010-2011 Guest Artists by Joyelle Fobbs, M.F.A. 2013
Anne Bluethenthal conducted an Alexander technique class in early March. She also taught Faye Driscoll, an up-and-coming a class on art and social justice, which examined choreographer, came to the Department of artists involvement and impact on their Dance at OSU to teach a master class in Autumn communities, as well as a career preparation 2010. The workshop explored her creative class that encouraged students to “think outside process for 837 Venice Boulevard, which was the box” when designing their profession. featured at the Wexner Center for the Arts in November. Faye Driscoll’s work has been Leaving the L.A. sunshine behind, D. Sabela gaining increasing attention in New York City. Grimes visited OSU for the Winter Quarter Not only did Dance Magazine feature her as one teaching hip hop courses to both majors and of the 25 to Watch in 2010, but also she is an non-majors. He was interested in more than artist-in-residence at the Joyce Soho. Students “shaking a tail feather”! His courses focused on at OSU had mixed reviews of her troupe’s the Funkdamentals, a type of hip hop technique Wexner performance, but many admired her use he has codified. The goal of his course was to of the space, including the backstage area, and create an environment (often referred to as the her trio of eccentric dancer-actors. cipher) and a culture (extending from the cultural experiences of predominately disadvantaged Jimmy Ortiz and Jose Alvarez spent two African Americans and Latinos in urban settings) weeks at OSU Dance working with twenty in the university studio setting where the roots students on floor patterns, moving quickly of hip hop could be cultivated and honored. The through space and in and out of the floor using resulting impact of this class was an increased improvisation, and Mr. Ortiz’s unique method sensitivity and respect for the historical and of fast and efficient movement. It was an social-cultural context from which this style honor to have Mr. Ortiz as a guest here at the of dance began and from where it continues Department of Dance because of his popularity to evolve. Grimes also presented a lecture in Latin America as the founding director of the demonstration, where his work-in-progress International Latin American dance company, was shown and his philosophy of teaching hip Losdenmedium. Organized by professor hop in the collegiate setting was discussed. Norah Zuniga Shaw, twelve students from the The presentation ended with a spoken-word department were chaperoned by Rashana recitation that morphed into a full out dance Smith and Alexis Del Sol while they continued within the cipher. Before the quarter was over, their study of his technique in Costa Rica during as guest choreographer, he finished a twentySpring break. minute dance work dealing with personal and communal reflection for fifteen students from Ze’eva Cohen visited in mid-February and OSU Dance. “Outward INflection” was a featured conducted a technique class for the freshmen as part of the Drums Uptown performance in and an accompanying lecture demonstration. May 2011 at the Mershon Theater in Columbus. Cohen was a former dancer with the Anna Sokolow Company, professor emeritus at Kendra Portier is the creator of Dancepants, Princeton University, and choreographer for her a community organization, which receives twenty-eight year old company Ze’eva Cohen donations for the development of new dance and Dancers. approaches to teaching. On faculty at Hunter College in New York, she came to Sullivant Hall Marcela Giesche is an OSU Dance alum and to teach a master class sharing her unique style performer who has danced for companies in the and influences from artists with which she has Netherlands, Brazil, and Germany. She returned recently been performing: she has been working to her alma mater to teach a master class, which with artists such as Michael and the Go-Getters, explored her approach to improvisation and Annie Kloppenberg Dance, and, David Dorfman choreographic development. Dance Company.
In March, Gregory Maqoma and Shanell Winlock discussed their latest work Southern Bound Comfort, which was showcased at the Wexner Center in Spring 2011. Their work was a theatrical duet that investigated human emotions in close relationships with unabashed honesty and sensitivity. The stage set was a unique highlight as they interacted with the live musicians and a series of long hanging ropes used to create rugs, a large tree, and the metaphor of being hidden by, tangled or attached to someone or something. At the OSU Union, M.F.A. student Alexis del Sol collaborated with performing artist John Leaños for a luncheon and performance event. Del Sol opened the lecture demonstration with her short film, Coconut Complex, followed by her dance piece entitled, “Mal Tiempo, Buena Cara” (Bad Weather, Happy Face.) Seniors Loganne Bond and Arianna Williams performed the piece. Del Sol is interested in presenting the Latino experience through other media, in this case live dance performance and video. Leaños presented Los ABCs: A Wartime Premier from the Other Side and Deadtime Stories with Mariachi Goose and Friends. Leaños is skilled at fusing together his multimedia craft with dark humor to demonstrate the Latino experience in the United States. Del Sol’s film was presented by the Wexner Center’s Film Festival, Ohio Shorts, and won first place and the People’s Choice Award at the African American Heritage Muse Film Festival in spring 2011. Guest artists Andreya Ouamba and Fatou Cisse hail from Dakar, Senegal. In April, they came to teach a technique class and participate in a lecture demonstration. Ouamba was a 2007 first prize winner at the prestigious competition Danse L’Afrique Danse and an international performer for various companies. Additionally, he is the artistic director and organizer of AEx Corps, a workshop for West African dancers. As an international artist, Ouamba has performed in London, Germany and France. He has also been in residency at various universities in Senegal and Western Europe.
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DE PA R TMENT N E W S
crossing boundaries Crossing the globe, immersing
ourselves in the dancing and drumming culture of Burkina Faso was an amazing opportunity to expand our cultural horizons. For three weeks in the summer of 2010, four OSU students and a UCLA student traveled with three members of the Baker-Tarpaga Dance Project to participate in a cultural exchange with local and internationally known artists from Burkina Faso to promote cross-cultural awareness and idea exchange. We explored the cultural landscape through learning Burkinabe and Ivoirian dances from enormously talented teachers, drumming with famous griots, traveling within Ouagadougou and out to rural towns, helping prepare a traditional meal, and hanging out with sacred crocodiles. We navigated our share of obstacles, too: our car broke down in the blazing heat twice, heavy rains flooded our first accommodations, we had to be hyperaware to avoid ingesting tap water, and the somewhat substantial language barrier prevented us from communicating directly with most people, but each trial bonded our OSU/UCLA family as well as pushed us to make connections outside the group.
Department of Dance Fund 306319 Support the Department of Dance in research, outreach, globalization, and more
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When we sat down with Burkinabe artists to home-cooked meals or to drinks at local dance venues, we utilized the multilingual speakers among us to learn about each other’s lives and cultures, but it was the development of these relationships through movement and music that was especially gratifying. We didn’t need verbal explanation for the articulation of a rhythm, the patterning of steps, the coordination of arms, hips, feet, and head, or even for choreographic collaboration! Through dance, we crossed the boundaries. by Fiona Lundie, M.F.A. 2012
Pura Vida! New Dance Exchange Program with Costa Rican Artists
Esther Baker-Tarpaga Receives BETHA Award
Kathryn Vickers is studying at the Performing Arts Research and Training Studios [P.A.R.T.S.] in Brussels, Belgium, under the direction of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. It is a two year program-both training and research cycle. Currently, she is enrolled in the training cycle; her schedule includes yoga, ballet, contemporary technique classes in the morning, macrobiotic lunch, then a variety of workshops ranging from theater, Rosas repertory, Forsythe improvisation, theory, philosophy, dance history, sociology, composition, bodywork and more. Vickers’ international experiences have opened her eyes to the relationship between philosophy and dance.
Since 1998 when she first visited Costa Rica and encountered the vibrant contemporary dance scene there, Associate Professor Norah Zuniga Shaw has wanted to bring the north/south axis of her dancing life together. Finally in 2011, with the launch of a new study abroad program in intercultural collaboration, she was able to do just that. In February, the Department of Dance hosted Costa Rican choreographers Jimmy Ortiz and Jose Alvarez as guest artists to conduct two weeks of master classes that were a huge hit with the students. Then 12 graduate and undergraduate students traveled to San Jose, Costa Rica during Spring Break to study with Ortiz and his students in the El Barco school for contemporary dance.
Assistant Professor, Esther Baker-Tarpaga, was awarded the prestigious Battelle Endowment Grant for her research Shifting Traces: Dance and Technology in and outside of Africa. Esther Baker-Tarpaga, research assistant Kristen Jeppsen Groves and project consultant Olivier Tarpaga traveled to four African countries to interview current contemporary African dance artists.
Since earning her M.F.A. in 2009, Kate Enright has spent time traveling and dancing throughout Europe and is currently living in Brussels, Belgium. Upon invitation from William Forsythe, she took daily classes and participated in rehearsals with The Forsythe Company in Frankfurt. There, she assisted Dana Casperson and William Forsythe with an installation called Knotunknot. She has rehearsed privately with Forsythe company member, Nicole Peisl to explore ideas for her upcoming piece, and hopes to collaborate with her in the future. While taking class and exploring historical sites in Berlin, she spent time with former OSU visiting professor, Nik Haffner. At Impulstanz this summer Enright will work as Janet Panetta’s assistant, ballet master for Pina Bausch. She has been pleasantly surprised by the large circus influence in Brussels, where circus and acrobatic communities regularly intermix with dance.
The students stayed with Costa Rican families, spent their days in contemporary dance classes and visited important ecological sites in Costa Rica’s beaches and rainforests. They engaged in intercultural collaborations, site-specific dance improvisations (including “inconspicuous dances” inspired by Ralph Lemon and “animal logomotions” inspired by Simone Forti), and a range of research activities, including the most important part of study abroad, immersion in a new cultural context.
Students and Alumni
by Norah Zuniga Shaw, Associate Professor
by Jessica Boone, B.F.A. 2012
by Kristen Jeppsen Groves, M.F.A. 2011
Current Students Louise Eberle studied language and literature in Madrid, Spain for the 2007-2008 academic year. She took it upon herself to find a dance community while abroad where she studied ballet with the Association of Professional Dancers of the Community of Madrid. While overseas, Eberle was able to take classes in France, England, Scotland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. In many of the countries she visited she had to develop relationships with local community members to learn when and where dance classes were held. Interested in experiencing dance outside of the United States, Kerry Sellers recently studied dance in London, United Kingdom during the Autumn Quarter 2010 through a study abroad program organized by OSU Dance. She attended Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and participated in several classes with London Contact Improvisation. Most classes were truly tailored to the interests of the students and the technique teachers were very interested in the success and growth of each student. Techniques offered at the school included Cunningham, Graham, and Release. Jessica Boone spent Autumn Quarter 2010 abroad studying at Taipei National University of the Arts in Taipei, Taiwan as part of an exchange with OSU Dance. Each week she took classes in ballet, modern, Tai Chi, Chinese opera, and Kung Fu. At TNUA, the approach to dance and movement came from a high sense of physicality.
B.F.A. and M.F.A. Alumni Victoria DeRenzo is currently on tour with Pilobolus, dancing in Andre Heller’s Magnifico. The show will be touring through Austria, Germany and Switzerland throughout the year. DeRenzo describes the show as “crazy and surreal”– including horses, Chinese acrobats, jugglers, balancing acts, high wire, flamenco, hip hop, Michael Curry puppets and more.
One of the graduate students who helped lead the study abroad experience, Alexis Del Sol writes: “After being up all night finishing final papers and packing, we boarded a plane in the wee hours of the morning for a twelve day study abroad adventure in Costa Rica. Engaging with El Barco students was an unforgettable experience. We jumped, fell, slid, dove and spun together. Supporting each other through fiercely athletic combinations was an unspoken rule of class.” Junior, Rachel Switlick comments,“The language barrier that many of us had been grappling with melted away into the understood language of movement, and we conversed
freely within a vast shared vocabulary of touch, timing, shape, space, momentum, and dance.” Several dancers participated in contact improv jams while others traded phrases with other El Barco dancers. Long bus trips, happy cows, strawberry fields. Sparkling clear water of the Pacific Ocean. “With its lush, vibrant green rainforest, rocky islands, monkeys, mellow waves, and sun, the beaches of Manuel Antonio are true paradise,” comments senior Joanna Reed. We danced under palm trees and on volcano rims. Senior Alex Powers describes her experience at Volcan Poas where Norah asked us to explore inconspicuous performances: “As we approached the end of the pathway, I could feel the suspense building. Together, we took in the sight of the volcano: its sheer vastness, its powerful presence, the smoke billowing out from the center, the rich colors, the sense of the unknown.” One particular excursion took us to Siquirres for the national art festival that happens every two years. We did ethnographic artist walks that we had tried first at home in Columbus, Ohio and now in small town Costa Rica. Sophomore Emily Jones comments, “one woman in particular caught my interest. I cannot remember what she sold. What she made. But I remember her eyes. She saw Rachel and I, but her gaze did not linger long enough to pass to our skin. She did not acknowledge, even unconsciously how we were different.” Salsa dancing, sun burns, earrings, sweat, maps with no words, homes with no addresses, and the ever satisfying feeling of Jimmy yelling “¡ESO!” when we did something right. Traveling to another place always grants one the opportunity to find perspective in everyday life and we found it in Costa Rica. Several students plan to return and continue studying with El Barco and many are asking, “when is the next trip!”
Baker-Tarpaga’s research was based on Kenyan choreographer, Opiyo Okach’s work Shift Center, “Shift…center… is not just a statement on the aesthetics of space, it is also about political and social reality.” Her investigations included interviews and dance footage of Andreya Ouamba, director of Atelier AEx Corps in Dakar, Senegal; Hind Benali’s Action Danse workshop in Casablanca, Morocco; Opiyo Okach’s Gaara Dance Project in Nairobi, Kenya; and other award-winning artists who participated in Danse l’Afrique danse! festival in Bamako, Mali. The web-based collaborative project aims to create cross-cultural exchange and shift the center of dance practices from dominant Western influences to a larger global community. Video posts and documentation of Shifting Traces can be found online at: shiftafrica.wordpress.com.
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(L) Photo courtesy Esther Baker-Tarpaga. (ABOVE L to R) 1. Vicki DeRenzo (horse bride) in Magnifico. Photo courtesy Magnifico Circus GmbH & Co. KG. 2. Photo courtesy Norah Zuniga Shaw. 3. Photo courtesy Esther Baker-Tarpaga.
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swinging out DE PA R TMENT N E W S
Sullivant Hall is undergoing a major transformation from now
until 2013. All occupants are vacating the property to help ensure the renovation proceeds on budget and on time. When the project is complete and Sullivant reopens in the fall of 2013, the building will house the Department of Dance, the Department of Art Education, and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library. The Music and Dance Library has been relocated to a new and improved space in the formerly named Science and Engineering Library. While no decision has been made at the time of this writing, exciting conversations are being held regarding other building tenants that will result in groundbreaking synergy of arts practice and research under one roof. The crown jewel planned for the building is the state-of-the-art, flexible performance space in the center of the building on the third floor. The roof is being raised to provide natural light during the day and a dynamic black box performance environment by night. Four newly designed studios on the west end of the building will be added above the three current ones on the second floor. The Department of Dance’s faculty, graduate student, and administrative offices are moving from the basement to the third floor's north wing. This new vantage will provide an expansive view of the University’s evolving “Arts District,” which includes Mershon Auditorium and the Wexner Center for the Arts. The Department of Art Education will be joining us in the south wing. The former theatre will become a permanent lecture hall for classroom pool, and the stage space itself will become a new computer lab for the Department of Dance and an additional flexible classroom for the Department of Art Education. Other amenities for the department include a new Wellness Studio, costume shop, student lounge/green room, break room for all the building’s tenants, smart classrooms, and open office work stations for graduate students. Much careful planning, discussion, and thought is ongoing to ensure the current delivery of classes is maintained and that the physical spaces nurture the creative and theoretical drive that is central to our mission. In the ensuing two years, the department of dance is, appropriately, swinging. As of June, all faculty, administrative staff and graduate students have been relocated to the 5th floor of Lincoln Tower. The move gave the Department an impetus to clear out decades of clutter that had accumulated in the back corners of Sullivant so that it may return to the revamped space in 2013 with a fresh slate. All studio-based classes are taking place in three studios in Pomerene Hall: two studios on the second floor and the gymnasium on the third floor. A fourth studio space that looks out onto the Olentangy River is being designed in Drake Union. The Theatre Department is also graciously sharing two smaller spaces/classrooms and one of their acting teaching spaces, which also has a sprung floor. Seminar and lecture classes that cannot be accommodated in the swing spaces will be moved to spaces in the University classroom pool. Students are encouraged to request rehearsal studios in the Student Union and RPAC, the student recreation facility. While sufficient spaces are available for classes and rehearsals, the Department will temporarily be without its own performance space. The Department has decided to make the next two years a creative exploration of alternative event sites. Faculty and students are encouraged to think outside of the box and create opportunities at various locations around campus, site specific and otherwise. Within the community, a plan utilizing the new Northland Performing Arts Center is being devised through an enterprising trade of space for the interim use of the department’s theatre equipment. Additionally, performances are planned at the EMMA Lab at ACCAD, as well as a low tech/no tech in Pomerene Gymnasium. Due to the conversion to semesters, the next Mershon Auditorium event is slated for fall of 2012; watch for announcements regarding repertory and works for a special alternative site to be announced for Dance Uptown in Spring 2012. by Dave Covey and Susan Petry
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Sullivant Hall watercolor renderings by George Acock, 2010. Architectural diagrams courtesy Acock Associates.
staying strong Dance Wellness & Rehabilitation Shin Splint Savvy by Meghan Durham, Visiting Assistant Professor
The reciprocal relationship of dance and wellbeing remains fertile ground for curricular, practical, and research-based endeavors in the Department of Dance, honoring a commitment to holistic praxis. Meghan Durham and Dave Covey designed a new course entitled “Extraordinary Bodies: Dance Difference, and Disability,” emerging from an ongoing informal dance practicum with OSU dancers and dancers from ARC, an organization that includes adults with a range of developmental and physical disabilities. The class engages theoretical issues in dance, disability performance, and pedagogical approaches with diverse populations. A culminating performance formalizes OSU’s collaboration with ARC and provides first hand experience of increased wellbeing through dance. The well-being, health, and longevity of the individual dancer are the goals of the Dance Wellness Program, a six-year collaboration between the Ohio State University Sports Medicine & Rehabilitation, Program for Performing Arts Medicine and The Department of Dance. The programming models holistic practice by including the dancer, parents, and artistic faculty in the services provided by the performing arts medicine team. An on-site Dance Wellness Clinic is staffed by physical therapists, led by Marika Baxter and chiropractor Dr. Robin Hunter. The clinic proves an invaluable resource for comprehensive injury prevention and rehabilitation. It extends to pre-performance treatment and backstage acute care for performers. Curricular contributions include screenings and follow-up education for first year students and a Dance Wellness Course that reinforces healthy strategies in dance training.
Dance Building Fund 312772 Join in to Raise the Roof on the renovation of Sullivant Hall; naming opportunities!
Dance as a primary strategy toward greater wellness constitutes Lise Worthen-Chaudhari’s (M.F.A. 2011) research agenda; namely, the development of Embedded Arts neurorecovery programs that use movement sensors to promote rehabilitation. Currently, Embedded Arts is in clinical trial at OSU’s Dodd Hospital. Worthen-Chaudhari’s formal research on Dance and Neurorehabilitation reviews existing science that supports the idea of dance paradigms stimulating recovery from central nervous system injury. Her research is scheduled for publication in Dance Research Electronic in June 2011.
by Lindsay Harmon-Matthews and the Dance Wellness Team In preparation for the upcoming move from Sullivant Hall, the Dance Wellness team is addressing injury prevention for shin splints, which can be associated with a change in dance surface. Shin splints can be attributed to a variety of causes but most commonly stem from an overuse injury called medial tibial stress syndrome. Pain along the inner part of the shin develops over time and may occur with jumping, running, pliés, or even walking. Shin splints can have several predisposing factors, including possible internal and external causes. Possible internal factors include excessive pronation of the feet (flat feet or rolling in at the feet/ankles), tight calves, weak calves, and/or alignment faults. Possible external factors include dancing on an un-sprung floor, unsupportive or improper footwear, a sudden increase in activity, and/or change in activity type or dance style. Since dancers often have difficulty controlling the external factors that can contribute to shin splints, it is very important for them to address the internal factors to prevent this injury from occurring, especially when dancing on new surfaces or on floors that are not sprung. Strong and flexible calves are important for shock absorption when dancing. Tennis ball self-release techniques for the calves can be used regularly to maintain muscle extensibility. Be cautious when doing this, however. Do not cause bruising with aggressive releases. Also, be sure you are not forcing your turnout, which can cause rolling in at the feet. The clamshell exercise is helpful for increasing strength of the turnout muscles. Wearing supportive shoes outside the dance studio is also important for providing support and protection for the foot and leg during the day. Try not to live only in flip-flops this summer!
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See the information below and Dance Wellness online for information on self-release techniques and the clamshell exercise. Questions regarding this information can be directed to the Dance Wellness team. Appointments can be made online if questions arise or pain occurs. Here’s to a healthy summer! Self release for the calf: Place tennis ball under the calf. Use your hands and opposite foot to support your body weight. Slowly roll up and down on the calf to release the muscle. Turn your leg in and out to get all parts of the calf. Perform for 3-5 minutes.
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"Recess is not Over" video still. Courtesy Katie Aylward.
DE PA R TMENT N E W S
Dance On Camera at OSU: A Promising Past, Present and Future by Teoma Naccarato, M.F.A. 2011
Dance for Camera boasts a long and proud history at OSU. Thanks to Vera Maletic, Victoria Uris, and numerous staff and students, the potential of video to document, transform and redefine choreographic possibilities has expanded. With Mitchell Rose joining the faculty in the fall, this trend will no doubt intensify! In 2010-2011, the Department of Dance supported several projects and screenings to promote the production and dissemination of Dance for Camera. Following is an overview of select events that featured professionals from the field, OSU dance alum, and current staff and students. OSU Dance Film Association Screening: Redefining Bodies, Space and Time On October 13, 2010, OSU Dance hosted its annual screening of selected works from the Dance Film Association’s Dance for Camera Festival. As the curator for this event, I selected pieces in which I felt movement was intentionally transformed by video technology, giving way to a hybrid form with unique possibilities for expression. I was interested in how the manipulation of space, time and relationships on screen could expand the scope and nature of dance, choreography and embodiment. Among the videos shared, Danse Macabre (Canada, 2009), Beguine (Netherlands, 2009), and Little Ease [outside the box] (USA, 2008), received overwhelmingly positive reviews from the student body and faculty. The screening also featured: Cinética (Spain, 2008), She (USA, 2009), and Entanglement Theory (Australia, 2009), making it an international event. Look out for next year’s screening during Winter Quarter 2012! OSU Alum presents feature-length documentary! OSU Dance teamed up with the Gateway Film Center to present Lynn Dally’s new documentary Gotta Move: Women in Tap. As a leader in the tap community, Dally and her collaborators chronicled five generations of phenomenal tap dancers who gathered from across America to share stories, dance, and celebrate. The film has an upbeat tone, offering a window into the passion, persistence and power of a team of women who are keeping tap alive. The screening was followed by a Q&A with OSU alum Jenai Cutcher, who directed Thinking on Their Feet: Women of the Tap Renaissance, allowing for cross-generational dialogue. It was inspiring to see OSU alum making their mark through dance on screen! Find out more about Dally’s film at womenintap.com.
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Collective Creation: A Music Video for The Chandeliers In Autumn quarter, visiting lecturer/M.F.A. 2010 Lily Skove directed the collective creation of a music video for the band The Chandeliers, in which a group of students acted as the performers and production crew, gaining movement and film-making experience. The parameters for the project were to capture a live event that was literally and materially impossible to replicate. In their case, this meant beginning with a fresh white drop sheet and costumes that gradually became smothered in blue, red, yellow and green paint. As they only had one set of materials, filming was a one-shot deal that required stringent preparation through storyboarding and shot-lists. As a team, they were interested in conveying a condensed narrative with an arc from task-like painting, to abstracted movement, to a playful paint fight. Skove provided movement improvisation scores from which the students worked and they took turns operating cameras to determine effective angles, framing, and camera motion. From the final product, it is clear that in addition to hands-on performance, composition and production experience, the students had a lot of fun!
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breaking grou Student Projects: New Ways of Envisioning Dance A wealth of students at OSU continues to envision dance in new ways through composition for screen, as well as digital video editing. During fall quarter, Skove taught a Dance for Camera course with guest teacher, Barbara Bickart, an interdisciplinary video artist in residence at the Wexner Center. Within the class, Skove observed a collective shift from defining dance films as dance vocabulary captured on screen, towards recognition of “…embodied presence as subject, kinesthetic drive as a way of using the camera, and narrative progression through imagery…” The course emphasized visual language and literacy, encouraging students to craft communication through choices of frame, light, color, texture, location, costumes, and more. Numerous dance students also participated in Dan Shellenbarger’s Video Art course in the Department of Art, which tackles the intricacies of the Final Cut Pro editing software, and further expands the scope of what constitutes dance on screen. Moving Forward: Welcoming Mitchell Rose to the Faculty! Next fall, renowned video dance artist Mitchell Rose will join the OSU dance faculty! With decades of experience as a choreographer, director and editor, he will no doubt pave fresh ground in Dance for Camera at OSU. Thanks to his ripe humor and effervescent personality, the NY Times coined Rose “the dance world’s Woody Allen”. Be sure to check out his inspiring video shorts, and the upcoming Mitch Show on his website: mitchellrose.com. The future of dance for camera at OSU is looking bright!
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Investigations in Dance: The Denman Undergraduate Research Forum by Loganne Bond, B.F.A. 2011
The Denman Undergraduate Research Forum is an opportunity for students to showcase research-based projects developed throughout the year. Several dance majors were among the 500+ presenters at the sixteenth annual event, held on May 11, 2011. OSU Dance participants included Louise Eberle, Meredith Hurst, Joanna Reed, Kerry Sellers, Brittany Strine and Arianna Williams. Eberle created a piece that demonstrated ideals and stereotypes of females in contemporary occidental culture. She took her inspiration from the opera Carmen. The study by Sellers tests the plausibility of choreographing a dance using the Internet as a rehearsal space as opposed to the studio. Directions were given through Youtube and email, from which her dancers then created phrases.
Art in Academia
by Haley Harrison, M.F.A. 2012 Haley Harrison presented her research “The Cultural Perspective of West African Dance” and her work-in-progress documentary, Breaking Boundaries: Movement and Cultural Exchange in Burkina Faso, at the Fall Undergraduate Research Day Poster Forum on October 22, 2010. According to Haley, “the forum was an amazing opportunity to share my experiences with others, learn about the work of other students, and network in the research field. Because artistic projects are often unusual at these venues, people were particularly engaged in my creative research and how I was able to communicate my process to a more science-based audience. This was great preparation for the May 2011 Denman Undergraduate Research Forum, where I also shared my research.”
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As a skydiver, Williams’s idea was to relate the manifestations of body movements in traditional dance with movement in the air. Her dancers tried skydiving in attempt to “skydance.” With interests in site-specific dance performance, improvisation, and interdisciplinary collaboration, Hurst and Reed constructed a performance that took place in their Victorian Village home. Through Bollywood dance, Strine immersed herself in Indian culture and crossed the bridge of multicultural boundaries in life. Strine performed with a group of Bollywood dancers at the research forum. The focus of Harrison’s research is the strong connection between dance and everyday life within West African societal and traditional contexts. The culmination of her research was the documentary Breaking Boundaries: Movement and Cultural Exchange in Burkina Faso. Judges reviewed the projects throughout the afternoon. Harrison’s project received third place honors in the art/architecture category.
CORD Conference
by Mair W. Culbreth, Ph.D. 2012 The Congress on Research in Dance (CORD) held its National 2010 Conference jointly with American Society for Theater Research (ASTR) in Seattle, Washington. The conference theme, “Embodying Power: Work Over Time,” provided a rich frame for talks, working groups and performances. Marta Savigliano, President of CORD, opened the interdisciplinary conference with a call to consider the biopolitics of bodies, movement across cultures and national borders, agency of bodies and bodies as agents of transformation. OSU Dance students and faculty attending the conference included Teoma Naccarato, Michael J. Morris, Karl Rogers, Mair W. Culbreth, Hannah Kosstrin and Assistant Professor Harmony Bench. For each of them, the conference topic provided multiple intersections for considering relationships between globalization, power, social justice, body ecologies and creative investigations central to our practices as dance researchers. Naccarato facilitated a working group entitled “What the body knows: Reflections on Performance Practice as Research,” Morris contributed a paper for “Ecology and/in/ of Performance.” Kosstrin presented for the group “Activist Choreographies: Pas de Deux, Mashups, and Other (In)Elegant Partnerships.” Culbreth participated in a working group entitled “Phenomenological Investigations of Embodied Agency” and Bench contributed a paper for “Televisuality and Embodiment.”
CORPS de Ballet International
by Courtney Harris, M.F.A. 2011 and Jessica Zeller, Ph.D. 2012 Ph.D. candidate Jessica Zeller and M.F.A. candidate Courtney Harris presented research at the 12th annual 2010 conference of CORPS de Ballet International in New York City. According to promotional materials, the organization is “dedicated to the development, exploration, and advancement of ballet in higher education,” and its membership consists of ballet teachers in higher education. The theme of the conference was Bodies of Knowledge: Dance in Academe. Zeller’s paper, "Generation Gap: Millennials and the University Ballet Class," proposed several methodological changes to university ballet training, addressing the proclivities and values of the Millennial Generation without upending the structure or content of the traditional class. Harris’s research, "Classical Ballet Technique: The Inclusive Dance," investigates creative solutions in which classical ballet technique adapts to students, rather than students becoming marginalized and excluded with the aim of molding themselves to an unyielding form.
Ph.D. News
Hannah Kosstrin (Ph.D. 2011, M.A. 2003) is Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance at Reed College in Portland, OR, where she teaches courses in dance studies and Labanotation. She is working with Reed’s Chief Technology Officer Marty Ringle and David Ralley to develop a LabanWriter application for iPad called KineScribe. In the fall, she presented her work at the joint conference of the Congress on Research in Dance/American Society for Theatre Research and at the Association for Jewish Studies. In February she organized the conference Modern Jewish Experience through the Lens of Dance, co-sponsored by the Melton Center for Jewish Studies and Department of Dance at OSU. In March she defended her dissertation, “Honest Bodies: Jewishness, Radicalism, and Modernism in Anna Sokolow’s Choreography from 19271961.” She plans to continue this research in a book-length project in the coming years. Hannah Kosstrin, publications: “Passion and Angst: Postwar Identity in Two Dances by Anna Sokolow.” Art Criticsm 25, no. 1&2 (2010): 131-152. “In Celebration of Anna Sokolow’s Centennial.” Dance Notation Bureau Library News V, no. 1 (2010): 1-4. Jessica Zeller’s doctoral dissertation is an investigation of ballet teachers and pedagogy in New York City from the opening of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School in 1909 to the founding of George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet in 1934. Zeller illuminates the individual contributions of several noteworthy but largely overlooked teachers—mostly European and Russian immigrants—whose work laid the foundation for ballet to become an American art form, thus challenging the widely propagated view that Balanchine is the sole patriarch of American ballet. In addition to examining the details of early twentieth century teaching methods, Zeller teases apart the context for ballet during this period. She looks at the impact of capitalism, vaudeville and revue, aesthetic barefoot dancing and other popular dance forms on ballet and its pedagogy, and she considers issues of immigration, Americanization, nationalism, and internationalism as they relate to the period’s teachers and training.
M.F.A. News
Rachael Riggs Leyva (Ph.D. 2013, M.F.A. 2009) presented from her research fusing structured and motif notation at the November 2010 Graduate Interdisciplinary Seminar in Literacy Studies. The seminar, “Creating Written Languages for Speech and Motion,” (copresenter Deborah Morton, Linguistics) explored issues in representation and analysis in the creation and development of written scripts.
Approaching Horizons With Rigor and Care by Michael J. Morris, Ph.D. 2015
When Dr. Harmony Bench joined the faculty of the OSU Department of Dance in the Autumn of 2011, she found herself facing a range of productive horizons: the intellectual, the spatial, the temporal, and the virtual. Moving to Ohio has done more than relocate Bench geographically; this move has marked a new phase in her career, new directions in her work with dance and media, and new identities as a she moves from being a successful doctoral candidate to functioning as a faculty mentor to others. Bench’s current work investigates areas initially addressed in her 2009 dissertation Choreographing Bodies in Dance-Media, examining how dance travels through social media (YouTube, etc.), in forms such as viral and crowd-sourced choreographies, and also extending into how dance travels through societies and cultures more generally, through movement contagions and the establishment of movement communities through the experience of shared dances. These research agendas are active across and throughout her various modes of contributing to the field: for instance, she has presented her scholarly research on screendance, “flash choreography,” and the YouTube-circulation of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” in a range of venues and publications; she has recently incorporated her theoretical research into a performance “site map dance” project in which she performs a series of site-specific dances that are videoed and mapped (using Google Maps) to produce a virtually synchronous performed geography of asynchronous site-specific performances; and in her teaching, she has introduced the exploration of how dances travel by embracing an integrated creative/physical practice of dance history, challenging her students to create choreographic studies in the styles of historic dance figures. In addition to teaching “20th Century Modern Dance and Ballet History,” Bench’s courses at OSU have included “Bodies on the Line: Politics and Performance,” an investigation of the politics of the body, drawing from critical cultural theory, performance art, performance studies, and dance studies; “Queer Theory/Queer Performance,” a directed reading with current doctoral students surveying the foundations, development, and application of queer theory; and a Ph.D. seminar “Dance Studies Theories and Methods” which will introduce students to critical theory, historiography, and ethnography as research methodologies. Having been mentored by scholars such as Susan Leigh Foster, André Lepecki, and Mark Franko, and inspired by the work of Felicia McCarren, Katherine Stockton, and Laura Marks, Bench has inherited rich paradigms from which to approach her own work and her role as a faculty mentor. She offers that what she hopes to contribute to the field and to those with whom she mentors includes both rigor and care towards the work that we do, producing work that is intellectually influential while also providing beauty and pleasure. As she moves towards new horizons in her research, performance practice and teaching—areas that are sure to integrate more in years to come as she develops courses specifically generated from her research—one can be confident that rigor, care, and beauty will be the values with which she will navigate.
Department of Dance Fund 306319 Support the Department of Dance in research, outreach, globalization, and more
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DE PA R TMENT N E W S Emeriti updates
Faculty updates
Vera Maletic was nominated honorary member of the Laban Guild International. She participated with the Motus Humanus Advanced Seminar at the Columbia College in Chicago, May 21-23, titled Rudolf Laban: New Facets of his Life and Work with the opening lecture on “The Historical Development of Laban’s Movement Ideas and Practices” that was illustrated with a PowerPoint presentation created by Melissa Bontempo. In addition to the lecture, she led a workshop exploring some of less used choreutic forms –“mixed two-rings.” For the forthcoming The Routledge Sourcebook for Rudolf Laban, she translated from German and discussed Laban’s concept of his Choreographic Institute (1926-1929), and his presentation at the first Dance Congress in Magdeburg (1927).
Esther Baker-Tarpaga’s new choreographic research project Whiteness Revisited was performed at Ten Tiny Dances in Columbus, Kenyon College Dance Department, Action Danse Festival in Morocco, and Atelier AEx Corps in Senegal. Baker-Tarpaga was invited as consultant to DTW/651 Arts meetings to discuss the future of the Suitcase Fund for Africa. In Fall 2011, she conducted research and teaching workshops in Senegal, Mali, Kenya, and Morocco with the support of a Battelle Endowment Grant which resulted in Shifting Traces: Contemporary Dance in and outside of Africa database and blog at shiftafrica. wordpress.com. In April 2011, she was invited by the French Institute and Danse Cite to teach workshops to Moroccan dancers in Rabat, Morocco. Her company Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project joined the Pentacle Roster and presented at the APAP showcase in NYC at the Ailey Theatre. The company was in residency for an upcoming performance at Jacobs Pillow Inside Out Festival in the summer of 2011.
Odette Blum completed the book Margaret Morris Movement in Labanotation, the basic technique of the first modern dancer in the UK (1891-1980). It includes a brief biography, a laudatory article by Ted Shawn, notes on style, photographs and two CDs of music that accompanied her exercises. Blum studied at Morris’s school in Scotland and was a member of her company, the Celtic Ballet. Support for this project was provided by a grant from the Dance Preservation Fund (DPF). Additionally, Blum taught a three-week intensive course in Motif and Labanotation for the Dance Department at Hope College in Michigan, and a Directing-from-Score course for Bridget Roosa, director of Dance at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, who staged Humphrey’s The Shakers. The cast included students from Emory University and was performed at the annual concerts of both institutions. She clarified The Shakers music score, which was copied on the music notation program Finale 2009 with DPF grant.
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Background: From Mara Penrose's M.F.A. project Scoring Change.
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Meghan Durham shared an evening of dance with her artistic collaborator, Karl Rogers at the BalletMet Performance Space in October 2010. They performed five premieres including commissioned duets from Susan Hadley, Bebe Miller, and Lisa Race, as well as original solos. Meghan’s choreography for students was presented in Drums Downtown VIII: Elements, for which she took an administrative lead as the dance liaison with OSU’s Percussion Ensemble. She also designed and taught a new course, “Extraordinary Bodies: Dance, Disability, and Difference” offering a theoretical, pedagogical, and experiential framework for working with diverse populations, in conjunction with the ongoing ARC dance practicum, led by Professor David Covey. Meghan’s Summer 2011 plans include teaching at the Bates Dance Festival, Young Dancers Workshop and completing an artist residency in the Now & Next Dance Mentoring Project, created by OSU Ph.D. dance alumna Ashley Thorndike-Youssef. Candace Feck enjoyed a year on academic leave, largely devoted to advancing her manuscript Elizabeth Streb: An Argument with Dance, a year that began with the excitement of hooding our first Ph.D. in Dance Studies, Ashley Thorndike-Youssef. Feck was also one of a small group of dance scholars who received NEA funding to develop and expand an earlier project, Accelerated Motion: Towards a New Dance Literacy in America, a website hosted
by Wesleyan University Press. In addition, she completed a chapter, “What’s in a Dance? The Complex Nature of Writing about Dance,” for the Dance Studies Reader proposed by coeditors Melanie Bales and Karen Eliot. Finally, she joined Bebe Miller and Company as a collaborator in developing the company’s new HISTORY project, for which she conducted interviews with choreographer Miller, dramaturg Talvin Wilks and performer Angie Hauser. Feck rehearsed and performed with the company at APAP at Danspace, January 2011. Throughout 2010-2011, Susan Hadley had the opportunity to stage a range of work spanning new contemporary choreography, musical productions, and reconstructions. She traveled to the University of Idaho to choreograph class for students in the dance program and crafted the duet “Hello, Night” for a collaborative production shared by Columbus professionals Karl Rogers and Meghan Durham. In partnership with OSU’s Department of Theatre, Hadley set the choreography for the Elton John/Tim Burton production of Aida. The musical’s cast of thirty-three included seven majors from the Department of Dance and was co-produced by CAPA at the Southern Theatre. Within OSU Dance, she reconstructed “Back, Jack” for Dance Uptown, which was originally commissioned by Ballet Memphis, premiering at the historic Orpheum Theatre. Her “Reich Dance” was performed at the Riffe Center in Drums Downtown VIII: Elements to Reich’s “Music for Pieces of Wood” where six dancers and five clave players from the OSU Percussion Ensemble shared the stage. Spectators across campus enjoyed this piece in sites that included the Oval, Ohio Union and RPAC. Michael Kelly Bruce reconstructed “Hummingbird” for OSU Dance Uptown. The piece was originally choreographed at PerryMansfield in 1995 and restaged on UDC in ‘98. The music is B.B. King and the setting is a roadhouse called the Hummingbird. Originally, the opening solo ended with a strangulation (those were his David Lynch days), but in the newest version the performer lives. Bruce also collaborated with the Wexner Center’s video artists-in-residence, Lilla LoCurto & Bill Outcault. Together, they worked together on the installation “Flaneur,” which is to be premiered in Berlin in autumn 2011. During Winter and Spring quarters of 2012, MKB will be on a leave to begin documenting Alternative Movement Practice for Dancers (AMP/ Dancers) with Motion Capture and animation artists at ACCAD. Really exciting!!!
Bebe Miller’s research this year focused on both performance and creative process, singly and in combination. DANCE FORT and HISTORY are Bebe Miller Company projects made in collaboration with long-time collaborators: dancers Angie Hauser (M.F.A. 1999), Darrell Jones and dramaturg Talvin Wilks. HISTORY is a performance work made in collaboration with choreographer and video artist Lily Skove (M.F.A. 2010) that will premiere in 2012, along with a companion media installation by Maya Ciarrocchi, who created imagery for “Necessary Beauty” (2008) and “Landing/Place” (2005). DANCE FORT, a web-based interactive site, is a vision of an artist-driven archive developed in consultation with archivists, metadata specialists and dance artists, designed to share with an audience what dance making thinks and feels like. The aim with both HISTORY and DANCE FORT is to dynamically expose ‘how’ we do what we do. Dr. Melanye White Dixon was selected from a national group of applicants to attend the Ohio Humanities Council’s Oral History Institute held at Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio and attended the 22nd annual IABD conference in Philadelphia, PA. She served on the board of reviewers for Dance: Current Selected Research, Volume 7 “Focus on Notation Systems,” and served as a consultant for the Ohio Department of Education on the Fairness and Sensitivity committee for Ohio Achievement Assessment, grades 6-8. Professor Dixon was granted a Faculty Professional Leave (FPL) Winter and Spring 2010 to complete work on her book on visionary ballet pedagogue Marion Cuyjet. She continues her work as a mentor through participation in the Arts and College Preparatory Academy (ACPA) Intern Program. Valarie Williams served as co-editor of the M.F.A. Art catalogue entitled You and Me and Everyone We Know produced by the Urban Arts Space and funded by the Efroymson Family Fund, a CICF Fund. In December she received her Ph.D. from Texas Woman’s University with a dissertation entitled “Ann Hutchinson Guest, Lucy Venable, and Odette Blum: Visionary Women Leaders Who Scored Dance as a 20th Century Art Form.” She presented at the 2011 Leadership for Tomorrow Conference: Investing in Communities about the educational wing of the Urban Arts Space and participated in the conference Modern Jewish Experience through the Lens of Dance. Valarie continues to serve as the Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences overseeing the curricular programs in Arts and Humanities and serves as the Director of Ohio State University’s Urban Arts Space, the 10,000 square foot gallery and performance venue in downtown Columbus.
Norah Zuniga Shaw continues to tour the globe presenting Synchronous Objects in festivals and exhibitions from Amsterdam to Beijing, Tokyo to Budapest. In addition to lecturing and giving workshops on the project and its applications to choreographic practice, collaboration, and contemporary society, Shaw has received commissions to re-imagine the screen-based original as a series of immersive video installations. The first of what Shaw calls the Synchronous Objects, reproduced installations premiered at PACT Zollverein in Essen, Germany as part Rhur2010 (that region’s designation as a European Cultural Capital). Versions of the installation were presented in 2010 in Chicago, Zagreb, and San Francisco and, with support from the Goethe Institute, will appear in Festivals in India, Turkey, Japan, and New York in 2011 and alongside William Forsythe’s choreographic objects in the Taipei Arts Festival this summer. Shaw and Maria Palazzi’s new project in choreographic visualization with Brazilian choreographer Bruno Beltrao is one of three sponsored by The Forsythe Company’s Motion Bank initiative and has been selected for a special residency at PACT Zollverein in December. While continuing her international research and dissemination work, Shaw also launched a new program for Ohio State students to study dance and intercultural collaboration in Costa Rica this year. Twelve undergraduate and graduate students spent spring break dancing with Jimmy Ortiz at his El Barco school for modern dance and absorbing the incredible environment and culture of Central America’s capital of contemporary arts.
Student Awards QFI Awards Autumn 2010 Mair Culbreth Alexis Del Sol Mary Eller Theresa Elwell Melanie Gallo Haley Harrison Daniel Holt Kristen Jeppsen Groves Alyssa LeRose Michael J. Morris Teoma Naccarato Eric Nordstrom Erin Carlisle Norton Amanda Platt Katelyn Pounds Alex Powers Brittany Strine Rachel Switlick Rosanna Tavarez
Alex Vetrano Sherrell Whitmire Kiki Williams QFI Awards Winter 2011 Tessa Anton Jessica Boone Melanie Gallo Theresa Niermeyer Elaine Berman Ellen Maynard Erin Carlisle Norton Eric Nordstrom Rashana Smith Bekah Edie Emily Jones Clara Martinez Joyelle Fobbs Crystal Fuller Abigail Zbikowski
with Distinction in Dance Louise Eberle Meredith Hurst Joanna Reed Kerry Sellers Brittany Strine Arianna Williams with Honors in the Arts Louise Eberle Meredith Hurst Joanna Reed Kerry Sellers Brittany Strine Arianna Williams
Scholarships University Funds Ella Matweyou Kristen Loy Lauren Bedal Emily Blunt Cheyenne Abel Diversity Quentin Burley Cheryl Rosario Emmeline GonzalezBeban Brian Koenig David Thill Alice Bacani Clara Martinez Mike Abbatiello Chafin Seymour Adam Houston Michelle Reid Tyisha Nedd Jamal Wallace Alkire Scholarship Theresa Elwell Melanie Gallo Amanda Platt Becker Scholarship Melanie Gallo Megan Haugen Pierson Scholarship Ellen Maynard Elaine Berman Woods Scholarship Amanda Platt Hannah Wasserman
Snow Scholarship Theresa Elwell Amanda Platt Megan Haugen Emily Wasserman Ellen Maynard Alexandra Runyon Alex Vetrano Rachel Switlick Liz Durrenberg Wichert Scholarship Chafin Seymour Amanda Platt Megan Haugen Rachel Switlick Gee Scholarship Joshua Hines (3-year) Daniel Holt Undergraduate Research Project Scholarships Tessa Anton Theresa Elwell Melanie Gallo Haley Harrison Chafin Seymour Alex Vetrano AGGRS Erik Abbott-Main Amanda Byars Courtney Harris Kristen Jeppsen Groves Betsy Miller Teoma Naccarato Mara Penrose Maree ReMalia Rashana Smith Abigail Zbikowski Coca Cola Critical Difference for Women Grant Alexis Del Sol Karipides Scholarship Maree ReMalia Battelle Endowment for Technology and Human Affairs Esther Baker-Tarpaga Battelle Endowment for Technology and Human Affairs, United States Artists Fellowship, Ford Foundation Fellow Bebe Miller
production with his daughter, a working actor in NYC and member of Actors Equity. Says Thom “ I feel as though I am the luckiest person in the world... I get to still go to the ‘playground’ with my kid.” Next up, he is directing MargOH!, Channing’s new cabaret act Tipsy in June at The Duplex and the world premiere of Hell is Where the Heart Is by Melissa Skirboll for the Planet Connectivity Festival presented at the Gene Frankel Theater, NYC. In September, he will direct another play (TBA) with his daughter at The Bridge Theater.
Meagan Grund (B.F.A. 2008) graduated summa cum laude and with distinction where she received her B.F.A. in Dance Performance with a focus on business entrepreneurship. Passionate about combining her love for dance Loretta DiBianca Fois (M.F.A. 1989) recently and helping others, she started a dance program received a 2011 Fellowship for Choreography for special needs children to take class and from New Jersey State Council on the Arts. have performance opportunities in high school She currently directs the dance program at and continued her work with developmentally Raritan Valley Community College and will be on disabled adults in college. During her senior year sabbatical for academic year 2011-12, working at OSU she produced Columbus Cares, a benefit towards her Dalcroze certification in Rome, Italy. dance performance for Dancers Responding Kate Enright (M.F.A. 2009) is currently living to AIDS (DRA), which led her to her current In July, Fogarty has a two-week residency at the and dancing in Europe. Arriving on the first of position as Associate Producer at DRA. Meagan Lillian Smith Center in Georgia, where he will be January, 2011, she stayed for one month in is a facilitator for online media promotion for Frankfurt, Germany to attend Forsythe Company interviewing the legendary Nancy Smith Fichter, all programs of Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights Lillian’s niece, who retired in 1997 after 33 years rehearsals. Bill Forsythe invited her to come AIDS. In addition, she oversees DRA’s College as the chairperson of the Department of Dance while she was at OSU, and after taking a year Connect and coordinates Dancers Responding at Florida State University. He and his daughter off due to an injury, she was happy to finally to AIDS audience appeal program. [From take him up on the offer! According to Kate “the Lulu were there last summer, where she got DRAdance.org]. the approval of the Lillian Smith Trustees to go company is extremely open and ingratiating Greg Halloran (M.A. 1991, M.F.A. 1996), and I feel so lucky to have been inspired by all of forward with the play she wrote about Lillian Associate Professor at University of Idaho, them. I continue to go back and visit whenever I Smith. Says Thom: “Nancy and I began talking and realized we had Helen Alkire and a myriad was recently awarded an NEA American get the chance.” Kate has attained an artist visa of dancers and choreographers in common. It Masterpieces: Dance grant to restage three and is preparing to move to Vienna, Austria to Jean Erdman solos. Robin Hoffman restaged start dancing for Chris Haring/liquidloft. They will was Ms. Smith Fichter and Helen Alkire who created the American College Dance Festival “Creature on a Journey and Hamadryad,” Nancy be in residency and performing at ImPulsTanz Association. These two pioneering women were Allison checked the Labanotated scores for this summer and will continue to work this fall the dances and set the solo “Passage,” and for a February premiere. In May, Kate performed responsible for getting Dance Departments out from under the Physical Education ranks Mary Corey notated the solo. The project took at a dance and technology conference in Berlin and made the full-fledged Arts degrees they place in fall of 2010. Halloran also hosted the with fellow OSU Dance alum Rachel Boggia. are today. I was here when we still had classes Northwest ACDFA conference in spring of 2011. Another alum, Karen Ivy, invited her to be part in what was known as the ‘laundry building’ in The University of Idaho’s performance group of a videocam conference as part of The Center the shadow of the ‘shoe.’ I am grateful to these Dancers Drummers Dreamers is touring during for Creative Research/Critical Correspondence women for being visionaries and helping me spring 2011 and is already receiving bookings project. In September, she and Corey Harrower become the artist I am today.” for spring 2012. Greg lives happily with his 130 will be teaching/performing in Vermont. “I pound lap dog, Cosmo, in their new house. feel very lucky to be a part of all these exciting Since leaving OSU in 2001, Associate Professor opportunities and even more so, to be meeting Tim Glenn (M.F.A. 1999) continues to serve Sydnie Liggett (B.F.A. 2008) has been working so many lovely people. I highly recommend on the faculty at the Florida State University’s as the Education Assistant at Dance New exploring overseas!” says Kate. Find her online at School of Dance. In 2010, he served as the Amsterdam [ DNAdance.org] in New York kathrynenright.com. FSU Project Director for the Intermedia Festival City since November 2010. She is dancing and taking classes regularly and her next goal Thom Fogarty (B.F.A. 1977) had a banner year of Telematic Arts, a collaboration with IUPUI, Butler University, and Dance Kaleidoscope. is working towards performance opportunities. in 2010 directing the premieres of Moments He was invited to present his work in the Sydnie would like to thank OSU dance for and Lemons by Fred Giacinto (performed to multimedia theater at Lincoln Center as part of the excellent education and guidance that sold out audiences at Theater for the New The Progeny of Alwin Nikolais. Tim continues to has helped her become the dancer and arts City, NYC in February), Being Heard: The Lillian serve as videographer for the Paul Taylor Dance administrator she is today. Find her at wix. Smith Story written and performed by Lulu Company’s Repertory Preservation Project, com/sydnieliggett/web. Fogarty, his daughter (sold out AEA showcase at Dixon Place, NYC in April), Bad Connections? where he has documented 32 Taylor works Tiffany Mills (M.F.A. 1995) is building a since 2003. He teaches technology and modern by Michael Levesque and performed by Paul new work, “berries and bulls,” which is being dance courses at FSU drawing on the Nikolais/ Cosentino (Hollywood and Edmonton Fringe supported by a Baryshnikov Arts Center Louis philosophy and method of performance Festivals, receiving 5 star reviews from several Residency and the Joyce’s Andrew Mellon and remains active in the studio generating Edmonton dailies, The Bridge Theater and The Tenant Program. OSU Alumni Emily Popenew repertory. Tim enjoys working closely with Cell, both in NYC in June-October). Fogarty Blackman (B.F.A. 1997) and three other directed the AEA approved readings of two new students as a choreographic mentor for M.F.A. Tiffany Mills Company dancers are exploring thesis concerts, when he isn’t at home caring plays: Cross/Hatch by Pete Mercurio (Judson text and movement in this latest dance theater for his 25 pet doves that are descendents of Memorial Church in August) and Hell is Where project, which will premiere in NYC in 2012 the original pair purchased in Columbus for his the Heart Is by Melissa Skirboll (The Bridge and will tour to Philadelphia, Rhode Island 1999 M.F.A. concert, Whistling Doves. For more Theater, NYC in October). In January 2011, he and Massachusetts. Alongside performing information, visit timglenn.us. directed 11 sold out performances of an AEA and touring, the Tiffany Mills Company offers approved run of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice at The Bridge Theater in NYC. The piece was another
Alumni updates
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an annual Summer Intensive in Brooklyn, to provide a laboratory to explore release technique, improvisation and partnering. Find her at tiffanymillscompany.org.
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Jessica Wilt (M.F.A. 2002) currently serves as Education and Outreach Manager for Dance Theatre of Harlem’s internationally recognized Dancing Through Barriers (DTB) program in New York City [ dancetheatreofharlem. org/DTBprograms]. DTB functions as a traveling classroom introducing thousands of young people to the art and discipline of dance. In addition, she is working on the completion of her NY State Teaching Certification in Dance. A well respected professional dancer, choreographer, educator and arts administrator, Jessica is a member of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable’s Board of Directors and an Arts Education Advisory Council Member with Americans for the Arts.
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Sara Wookey (B.F.A. 1996) continues to move between dance, performance public practice, media and location-based projects across the regions of Southern California, the Midwest, Canada and Europe. A recipient of a Cultural Exchange International Grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles supported her residency in the Netherlands last Fall and where she will return to this summer to present a performance lecture at the Performance Studies International Conference, and teach at the Tanzhuis Tilburg and at the Prague Quadrennial 2011. She is currently working on a new solo performance Disappearing Acts and Re-occuring Subjects that will be presented in 2012. She has recently completed a two-year performance project titled BEING PEDESTRIAN in collaboration with visual artist Sara Daleiden and the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles and become one of five dancers certified to perform and to teach "Trio A" by Yvonne Rainer, for whom she worked intensely with last winter and continues to exchange with as a mentor and as a friend. Sara is a founding member of the Choreographer’s Working Group, a collective of professional choreographers who will launch a website and book on their process in 2011-2012 and teaches as a guest artist in the dance department at California State University, Long Beach and Cal Arts. Her current home base is Los Angeles where she shares a Spanish-style apartment with her husband and photographer Sean Fox and their Dutch cat Maki. Find her at sarawookey.com.
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upcoming...
Friday-Saturday, November 18-19, 2011 MFA Concert: Amanda Byars / Erik Abbott-Main / Alexis Del Sol Northland Performing Arts Center Friday, January 20, 2012 Dance on Camera + MFA Screening: Eric Nordstrom LOCATION TBA Friday-Saturday, February 3-4, 2012 MFA Concert: Abby Zbikowski / Danté Brown Northland Performing Arts Center Friday-Saturday, February 24-25, 2012 Drums Downtown Capitol Theatre, Vern Riffe Center Friday-Saturday, March 2-3, 2012 Winter Concert Unplugged Pomerene Hall Gym Monday, March 19–Saturday, March 31, 2012 MFA Project: Fiona Lundie / Rashana Smith OSU Urban Arts Space Thursday-Saturday, April 26-28, 2012 Dance Uptown LOCATION TBA Monday-Saturday, May 14-19, 2012 Spring Dance Festival
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Back: “Hummingbird" by Michael Kelly Bruce Front: "Outward INflection" by D. Sabela Grimes From Dance Uptown 2011. Photos: Catherine Proctor.