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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