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Dear Friends,
There is much to report on since our last newsletter in November. Students
and faculty have been busily involved in a number of dance productions: December’s
Choreographer/Composer Collaborative Concert; the Chamber Dance Company’s
annual concert in Meany Hall, which celebrated women choreographers, the UW
Faculty Dance Concert, and most recently, performances of Myra’s War,
a year-long culmination of an interdisciplinary project with Maria Simpson,
Peter Kyle and faculty from the School of Drama. I hope that many of you were
able to join us for these events and to witness the fruits of our labors and
the talents of our students and faculty. Undergraduate dancers are currently
hard at work on the upcoming Dance Majors Concert and SPIN, sponsored by the
Dance Student Association. Renowned choreographer Tandy Beal is also in town,
setting,” The Heisenberg Principle,” a duet for dancer and weather
balloon as part of CDC's performances for the UW Summer Arts Festival; the
concert will also feature works by dance pioneers Isadora Duncan and Ted Shawn.
These concerts will all be in the Meany Studio Theatre, so be sure to mark
your calendars today.
Performances are one potent way for us to connect to people across campus
and the Seattle community. This year we have also made some meaningful inroads
into deepening the program’s presence in the community through outreach
and teaching activities. This fall and winter, MFA candidate Kelly Knox co-taught
a seminar through the UW Pipeline Project, which initiated a collaboration
between dance majors and minors, teachers from Pacific Northwest Ballet’s
outreach program and fourth graders from three elementary schools on the Eastside.
The project, called “The Great Migration,” was inspired by the paintings
of Jacob Lawrence that document the mass migration of African Americans from
the rural south to northern urban centers (see A&S Perspectives Newsletter,
winter-spring 2003 vol.14 no. 2 for more information). Although Kelly will
be graduating in June, she has already set the wheels in motion for future
UW-PNB residency opportunities. This winter thirty dance students also got
a “real-life” taste of the teaching profession. Students from Professor
Jennifer Salk’s Teaching Methodologies course taught classes in a variety
of idioms to young dancers at local dance schools. The new venture was a great
success for all involved. Faculty and graduate students from the Dance Program
have also played a key role in educating audiences about dance via the pre-performance
lectures that precede all UW World Series dance events.
This has been a year filled with new dance experiences for a number of students
in the program. We led off the New Year with a four-day residency with Carla
Maxwell, artistic director of the Limon Dance Company. Carla was immensely
generous with her time, energy and passion. She and veteran company member,
Roxanne d’Orleans Juste introduced intermediate and advanced dancers
to the expressive and dramatic potency of Jose Limon’s technique and
choreography. During Spring Break, thirty-four undergraduates participated
in their first American College Dance Festival Association gathering at Western
Washington University in Bellingham. MFA candidates Carolyn Pavlik, Kelly
Knox and Toby Billowitz gained some valuable teaching experience while giving
some wonderful classes to appreciative students from all over the northwest
and California. Fellow grad, Kory Perigo presented his quartet, “ Formal
Intrusions “ in the adjudicated concert and dance majors, Amanda Morrison,
Daniel Linehan and Kayti Bouljon performed their collaboratively-made trio,”
One Out “ to a highly enthusiastic group during the informal showings.
We all came back to school exhausted and sore but eager for more dancing,
which is a good thing because Artist-in-Residence, Mark Haim has organized
a fantastic weekend workshop series for students featuring Martha Myers, Tandy
Beal, Stephanie Skura, Cyrus Khambatta, Tonya Lockyer and K.T. Niehoff.
As you can see, we have much to look forward to in the coming months. At the
same time, we find ourselves in challenging times, dealing with a sense of
insecurity and perhaps apprehension about what the future holds, both locally
and globally. I am reminded of many great people, who in times of suffering
and strife have turned to the creative act, for it is precisely in times like
these, that the necessity for art becomes even more apparent, both as a means
to seek answers to difficult questions and to make sense out of the world’s
chaos. I know these things to be true but what I have witnessed at the dance
program this year has surprised me nonetheless. Although, I can’t imagine
a world without art or dance, in particular, when Washington’s economy
nose-dived last year and the university saw its first round of budget cuts,
I expected to see a decline in our number of majors and student interest in
dance. What I have observed, however, is the anti-thesis of such a trend.
Classes are full, interest remains high and I am inspired by the creativity
and passion I see around me. Again, I invite you to come by and visit the
program, to see our concerts and to be a part of our dance family.
Happy Spring.
