“Ballet was my first language; it was my first love,” recalls Butler University dance professor Susan McGuire. But after being moved by a performance of Diversion of Angels by the Martha Graham Dance Company, McGuire pivoted to a career in modern dance, eventually joining the esteemed institution as a soloist in 1973. She went on to […]
On a cool September evening in Alameda, California, I and over a hundred Bay Area residents gathered in the parking lot of the Alameda Free Library. The innocuous space, seemingly universal in its purpose and design, was once part of a thriving tonarigumi—an historic Japantown neighborhood. As part of a community art walk to honor […]
For the aspiring dance professor, the master of fine arts in dance is a baseline hiring requirement. MFAs are also terminal degrees, meaning they’re the highest possible degree offered in fine arts at universities around the world. The achievement launches many candidates not just into academia but also into careers in choreography, performance, arts administration […]
Since March, hundreds of dance majors have been using platforms like Zoom to continue their educations, dancing from the safety of their homes as coronavirus has swept the nation. What many educators initially hoped would be a temporary setback—a few weeks of online learning before a triumphant return to in-person classes—has turned out to be […]
Betsy Brandt gets more than a few questions about what, exactly, she offers the choreographers she works with—the likes of Jennifer Monson and Sara Hook, to name a couple. “I help people make dances,” she says simply about her role as dance dramaturg. “Sometimes, it’s like being their composition teacher—except they know more than me, […]
On Wednesday, March 18, I was supposed to return to Juilliard and teach Pilates after a two-week spring break. Instead, I rolled a mat onto my bedroom floor, logged in to Zoom and was greeted by a gallery of 50 small-screen images of young ambitious dancers, trying to make the best of a strange situation. […]
David Roussève has spent the last 35 years creating dance theater work that’s both fiercely political and personal. He took on AIDS with The Whispers of Angels (1995), same-sex marriage with Jumping the Broom (2005) and the Twitter generation with Stardust (2014). Dance writer Deborah Jowitt characterizes his work as treading “a fine line…between gritty […]
Barbara Bashaw has always been a pioneer. Since kicking off her career in education by building a dance program from the ground up at an elementary school in Brooklyn, she’s gone on to become an inspiring force in teacher training. Now, as director of the new doctoral program in dance education at Columbia University’s renowned […]
Q: My tween is begging me to go to a faraway summer intensive, claiming “all my friends are going.” How do I know if she’s ready? A: It can feel like a rite of passage for serious dancers to attend an intensive at a major ballet school. They dance all day and often explore the […]
Since she was hired in 2006 to create a dance program at Washington & Lee University in Virginia, Jenefer Davies has operated as, essentially, a one-woman show. She’s the only full-time faculty member (with regular adjunct support). Over the last 13 years, she has created a thriving program along with a performance company—at a school […]