RECENT NEWS
Technique Enrollment Policy
(1/24/08)
To ensure an optimal learning environment for all students, to ensure that Dance majors can meet graduation requirements in a timely manner, to ensure fairness for all students, and to make the best use of faculty time, the Department of Dance will follow the procedure detailed below for pre-registration in Fall, 2008 Ballet and Contemporary classes.
Department of Dance
UNCG Department of Dance Alumni Newsletter
Spring/Summer 2008-09
Volume 3, Issue 3
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Editor and Designer:
Katie Fennell
Photos:
Steve Clarke
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Van Dyke's SPIKE Selected for Performance in New York City
Jan Van Dyke’s 1982 work SPIKE was selected for inclusion in the fourth national conference Sharing the Legacy 2008 concert as part of Hunter College’s Kaye Playhouse series, celebrating historically significant dances of the 20th century. The Wayne State University Dance Workshop performed the seminal work, choreographed to Laurie Anderson’s haunting score “O Superman," for the New York City performance March 14-15, 2008. Wayne State was one of only 12 university dance departments across the US and internationally chosen to perform. Sharing the Legacy 2008 focuses on the work of choreographers who significantly shaped dance between 1960 and 1989. The series is ongoing. Since 2002, the Hunter College Dance Program has hosted three national conferences and five distinct Legacy forums.
Wayne State began its fruitful relationship with Van Dyke in 2005 when she was chosen as an Allesee Artist in Residence, setting her award-winning work, ROUND DANCE, commissioned by the London-based Laban Centre in 1985. WSU dancers took top honors with this work at the American College Dance Festival in 2005.
Van Dyke is nationally recognized for developing a successful career outside the New York marketplace and has been honored consistently for her work. From 1972-80, she directed the Dance Project, a studio and performance space in Washington, DC and toured nationally both with her company, Jan Van Dyke & Dancers, and as a solo artist. During that time, she was honored by WASHINGTONIAN MAGAZINE (December 1975) as one of "76 Washingtonians to Watch in 1976," and noted dance author Don McDonagh included her work in his book, THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO MODERN DANCE (1976). In 1979, the Metropolitan Dance Association in Washington honored her with the Award for Outstanding Service to the Field. For its 60th anniversary issue, DANCE MAGAZINE (June 1987) listed Van Dyke as an influential independent choreographer in the family tree depicted in "Modern Dance: A Growing Presence."
SPIKE was commissioned in 1982 by the Contemporary Dance Theater of Cincinnati, which performed the quartet for over 15 years, citing it as their "signature piece" and including it as part of their 25th Anniversary Gala Season in 1999. Van Dyke also kept SPIKE in active repertory with her company during a three year stint in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1980s and has since revived it over several seasons for performances in Greensboro, NC. Noted dance critics have described this seminal work as follows:
“Spike,” for the Cincinnati troupe, emphatically expands on familiar Van Dyke motifs in a fast-paced design to Laurie Anderson’s contemporary music. The compelling solos for lead dancer Jefferson James…are dominated by fast directional shifts and limbs that jabbed, soared and pranced at sharp angles….The ensemble bolts in and out in constantly shifting shapes, covering the space with commanding speed and energy.
January 10, 1983, Julie Van Camp Washington (DC) Times:
Jan Van Dyke (and Dancers)…offered sophisticated structures in their works. Van Dyke’s “Spike,” danced to Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” closely matched sharply executed angular movements with the quick pulsing tempo of the music. (The dancers) flashed their way through a tightly structured work demanding technical clarity with speed, not to mention the appropriate punk attitude.
July 1, 1983, Ellen Searle, East Bay Express:
Jan Van Dyke’s ideas are intriguing. She offered…”Spike” to a Laurie Anderson collage. Mechanistic, quirky movements of pointillistic design with no discernible legato finish are the things that interest Jan Van Dyke.
January 7, 1985, Marilyn Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle:
Dr. Van Dyke is currently Professor and Chair of Dance at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, director of the Jan Van Dyke Dance Group, and founder and executive director of the North Carolina Dance Festival since 1991. Her book, MODERN DANCE IN A POSTMODERN WORLD, was published in 1992. In 2001, she was awarded the Annual Award for Contributions to the Field by the North Carolina Dance Alliance. A Fulbright Scholar, Van Dyke spent three months teaching dance at the Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa in Portugal in 1993 and later spent a term at the Western Australia Academy for the Performing Arts in 2000.
Dr. Van Dyke restaged the work for Wayne State University dancers during an Allesee Guest Artist residency on the Wayne State campus in January, 2008. The project was directed by Dr. Doug Risner, Associate Professor of Dance. For further information, please email drisner@wayne.edu
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Alumni News
1988
Ken Skrzesz, MFA
Ken Skrzesz, who received his MFA in 1988, is being awarded the Ethel Martus Lawther Alumni Award. Ken is a high achieving leader and entrepreneurial spirit who has contributed to the field of dance and changed every community within which he has worked.
From the beginning, Ken has had a career devoted to initiating and instigating. Immediately after finishing his MFA, he went to New York City where he founded, directed, choreographed and performed for Luna Dance Company, a 15-member professional group that toured the East Coast.
He left New York to spend two years as assistant professor of Theatre and Dance at Southwest Missouri State University. Ken returned as a freelance artist in the Baltimore area, where he assumed leadership of Kinetics Dance Theatre, a 10-member, professional company with a school of 300 students.
In 1996, after three years with Kinetics, Ken founded his own group, Surge Dance Company of Baltimore, Inc., a 10-member ensemble with an extensive touring and educational outreach program. The company was in residence at the Carver Center for Arts and Technology, an arts magnet high school in Baltimore County where Ken taught for seven years. During this time, he was also director of the Musical Theatre Summer Intensive, a two-week summer program for 90 students, aged 7-17, that focused on the elements of musical theatre. At the same time, he served as director of the After-School Arts Program, a dance program at Carver that exposed elementary, middle, and high school students to the standards, teaching methods, and aesthetic expectations of a magnet school dance program.
Since 2004, Ken has been the Executive Director of Clear Space Productions, which he co-founded in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Set up to establish a presence and awareness of theatre, music, and dance in the Coastal Delaware area, the non-profit company has three specific parts: Theatre Company, Arts Institute, and Outreach Program. Clear Space has an audience base of over 12,000 and a student body of over 500, employing more than 17 artists and an additional 10 professional guest artists. Not limited to an administrative focus, his role includes choreographing, teaching and performing in the educational outreach program.
2006
Dionne Griffiths, MA
Upon Dionne's being awarded the Fulbright Fellowship for the 2006-07 academic year:
"Here are some of the highlights of what I’ve been up to since graduating from UNCG with my M.A. in Choreography in 2006. I was Fulbright Fellow to Trinidad for dance for the 2006-2007 academic year. While I was in Trinidad, I choreographed 'Breakthrough' for members of the Metamorphosis Dance Company, which was performed in May and July, 2007 in Trinidad. I also presented my Fulbright Fellowship dance research at the University of the West Indies-St. Augustine campus in Trinidad and in Kingston, Jamaica in April, 2007. In June, 2007, I was featured in the Spelman College webpage that highlighted Fulbright Scholars who were Spelman College graduates. After returning to the U.S., in the summer of 2007 I had the wonderful experience of participating in the Urban Bush Women Summer Institute in Brooklyn, NY. In the Fall of 2007, I received the Toyota Alumni Performance Fund Grant to publish my Trinidad memoirs. I also choreographed for the University of Louisville’s African-American Theater Program’s plays Harlem Renaissance Revue and Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, which were two of the three plays taken on tour to China as part of a cultural ambassador program in December, 2007. In Louisville, KY, I have also been very active in community outreach and dance education by teaching adult jazz dance classes, teaching hip-hop dance workshops and Jamaican Folk dance masterclasses. I also was the artistic director of an annual black history showcase in Louisville."
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Distinguished Faculty
Sue Stinson, Ed.D.
Professor
Dr. Sue Stinson was invited to present at three international conferences in 2007-08. In October, 2007, she was opening speaker at a conference celebrating the 10th anniversary of the doctoral program in the Department of Dance and Theater Pedagogy at the Theatre Academy of Finland. Dr. Stinson co-taught a course in 2007 that initiated the doctoral program. Her 2007 presentation was entitled "Bodies and Communities: Finding Connections, Expanding Boundaries."
In January, 2008, she presented a plenary address, "Research as Artistic Practice," at the National Center for the Arts in Mexico City. This presentation, along with a workshop on dance research, was part of Encuentro Internacional de Investigacion de la Danza 2008.
In July, 2008, Dr. Stinson has been invited to be a plenary speaker at an international conferences at the University of Cape Town, South Africa: "Confluences 5--High Culture, Mass Culture, Urban Culture---Whose Dance?"
Jill Green, Ph.D.
Professor
Dr. Jill Green was recently promoted to full professor in the Department of Dance. She is certified to teach Kinetic Awareness. Additionally, she is certified as a Kinetic Awareness Master Teacher (able to teach teachers of the work) and is a specialist in a number of somatic practices and movement approaches. She received her doctorate in Somatics and Movement Arts at The Ohio State University in 1993. At UNCG, she teaches DCE 560: The Dancer’s Body, DCE 661: Dance Pedagogy in Higher Education, DCE 230: Somatics, Dance 360: The Body and Motion in Dance, and graduate courses in dance education. Her current research focuses on socio-political (and gender) issues related to the body in dance and dance education. She was a former co-editor of Dance Research Journal and a 2003 Fulbright Scholar, and is the current graduate coordinator.
Jill Green was also invited to present two papers at a conference celebrating the 10th anniversary of the doctoral program in the Department of Dance and Theatre pedagogy at the Theatre Academy of Finland. Dr. Green presented her research conducted while she was a Fulbright Scholar at the institution in 2004.
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Alumni Concert Brings in Former Faces, New Dances
The Department of Dance will host their annual alumni concert on September 27, 2008. Alumni featured will be Katie Kyle Baker (BFA, 2000), Amy Cooke Carter (BS, 2001), Lauren Trollinger (BFA, 2005), Aimee Moynihan (BFA, 2005), Don Atwood (MFA, 2001), and Julie Mulvihill (MA, 2005).
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UNCG Department of Dance
1408 Walker Avenue
Greensboro, NC 27412
