ENTERTAINMENT
Financial Footwork
Underfunded but unstoppable — these dancers still thrive in the School of Fine Arts. BY JULIANNE MOBILIAN | PHOTOS BY BRIANNA GRIESINGER
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imble, deliberate feet pound away in concentrated movements inside Putnam Hall on a rainy Thursday afternoon. The scent of fresh dust hangs in the air as Curtis Johnson concentrates on his next dance move. A sagging roof stained with watermarks and paint-chipped walls acts as his audience. Barefoot, Johnson checks his composure in the dingy wall of mirrors surrounding the room. A jackhammer screams in the background as he glides over to the end of a shabby practice hall. Unfazed by his dilapidated surroundings, he carries on with his practice. Like most students in the School of Dance program, Johnson is indifferent to the orchestral sound of construction workers and the tools they operate invading his routine. As a senior in the School of Fine Arts’ dance program,
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backdrop | Fall 2014
Johnson and a handful of others will compose their senior dance compositions in the poor conditions that plague Putnam. The seniors can be found practicing their respective solo and group routines in the building’s worn-down rooms. Johnson, Leah Crosby and Annie Scott prepare for their solos, as Becky Sebo, Bethany Logan and Kaitlin Flynn prepare for their group piece. Some might find working among the chaos to be intimidating challenge, but the real challenge, according to the dancers, is due to the lack of funds required to keep the dance program afloat. The school of dance is no longer the thriving program it once was. “We’ve lost a lot of faculty members due to budget cuts and things like that,” Crosby says. “A lot of faculty memA Swedish hockey player once scored a goal by dropping a puck from his pants.
bers have become administrators, and they just haven’t been replaced. The school of dance is actually hurting a lot for resources.” For bringing in so much revenue every year as a school, the dancers worry none of it will reach the arts. “We’re leaving a very different program than we came into,” Crosby says. Putnam has a pipe leakage, so the students can’t use their main practice theater. Currently, they are forced to work in small classrooms that can’t accommodate many students. Students in the program share the frustration of tight spacing and tighter funding. “We have 14 kids in one classroom, and we’re squeezed,” Scott says. “Support the arts!” Flynn yells, laughing and throwing her hands in the air. The dancers are good sports about the situation, but it’s evident their program is financially strained, and it’s taking its toll on the students. Constant buzzing and drilling get in the way of sessions that require deep focus and strategy. Although the funds may not be booming, the dance program remains. “The school of dance here is nationally renowned, and there are so many things really unique about the program,” Crosby says. The program’s main concentration is on modern dance and choreography, but it utilizes and encourages all forms of dance. Now in their senior year, the six students currently enrolled will perform a solo and group piece during fall semester before switching pieces and performing in the spring. That way, each student has a chance to partake in both a solo and a group performance. “We’re such a small class compared to the previous graduation class, which had like, 14 people — so we’re very intimate,” Johnson says of his fellow classmates. Crosby is quick to agree. “We have, quite literally, spent in class with each other a minimum of two and a half hours a day.” And with weekend rehearsals, it could be as much as seven hours, she says. “We’ll walk into our technique class, and it’s at 8:30 in the morning. There are morning people in this room and there are not morning people in this room,” Flynn says. “People are rolling up, rolling out and everyone’s kind of silent to each other, but when we’re in here, we’re just really funny and loud. [We’re] our complete selves.” There may be some drawbacks to spending so much time together, but everyone nods their heads silently at Crosby’s sentiment when she explains the amazing relationships they have developed in both a working environment and an educational environment. “We all feel comfortable critiquing each other’s work in a way that’s legitimately constructive and useful and comes from a place of love,” Crosby says. To create their own pieces, whether as an individual or as a group, the dancers must respond to the prompts they are given from the instructors. “In order to push us to be creative, we are put under very strict parameters, and they will ask us for very specific things,” Crosby says. She compares it to art or photography An average hockey player can loose up to eight pounds of water weight during a game.
projects and how the work must be completed in ways that are true to each person’s aesthetic voice. “How we all move as different bodies in space is an expression of our individuality, and I think that with the senior project, there is more of an allowance to really find your creative, artistic voice,” Flynn adds. “The art is thriving here — it’s just underground,” Crosby says. And even though the dancers deal with budget cuts and construction, they love everything the program has taught them. They will continue to train and practice all year for their performances and hope to see conditions improve for future students. b
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