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Welcome to Dance at Denison!

Your college search has no doubt revealed the shortage of independent dance departments in small liberal arts colleges with the academic strengths Denison boasts.  Offering an independent dance major for nearly four decades, we offer you ways of working with your expressive body that will serve you for your entire life. Your curiosity and our longevity is a powerful combination for achieving great things in student and faculty collaboration.

The development of creative artists, inquisitive scholars and autonomous thinkers through movement practice and dance studies is the focus and strength of our department.  Here you will join a small group of passionate and dedicated students who combine their dance major with interests in English Literature, Economics, Psychology or Communication. You will have the opportunity to interact personally with gifted faculty members and talented and nationally visible guest artists, to audition and perform early in your college career, and to experience leadership and responsibility.

Gill Miller

As a dance major, you will be encouraged to discover your individual talents and interests and to expand these through advanced, independent study of dance, manifested in a Senior Research project. We have designed our major to cross multiple dance disciplines and to provide a solid and broad base of intellectual and experiential expertise in dance.

Browse through our website for information about our faculty, our students, our facilities, our guest artists, and our curriculum.  The tab “Visit Us” is a specially designed for you to find out more about dance at Denison. Please contact us to request a Prospective Student Manual, to ask a question or to arrange a visit.

We invite you to visit us and take a class, meet your fellow classmates and upper class-persons, make your interests known, and plan on taking advantage of all a small college has to offer its dance students!  You will find a rewarding, rich and useful experience in dance at Denison!


Most warmly,
Gill Wright Miller, PhD
Chair/ Associate Professor


 

FALL 2009

Dance Department Auditions:  Wednesday,  September 9, 7:00pm, Doane Dance Upper Studio

Susan Alexander Residency: Master Class, September 18, 2:30pm, Composition Workshop, September 19, 10am - 4pm

Blakeley White-McGuire Residency: Master Class, Wednesday, October 7, 2:30pm,  Public lecture, Thursday, October 8, 10:00am, Bryant Center, 301

U Win Maung, Assistant Professor of Dance (Burmese) in Performance: Friday, October 16, (short performances during Museum opening) Denison University Museum, Burke Hall.  Free and open to the public.

Bryant Art Center Opening Ceremony: Site-based performances by students of Composing the Body course, throughout Bryant Art Center, Friday, October 16, 5:30-6:30pm. Open to the Denison community.

Rebecca Bryant Residency: October 22-24, teaching Contemporary Technique and Improvisation

Rebecca Bryant, musician Don Nichols with Sandra Mathern-Smith in Performance: Saturday, October 24, time and location TBA

Cultural Studies in Dance History Class Performance: Tuesday, November 3, 7:30pm, Doane Dance Performance Space. Students to perform Judson-like theater pieces. Open to the Denison community.

Burmese Student performance: Thursday, November 19, 8:00pm, Doane Dance Building featuring burmese dance performed by Denison students and U Win Maung, Assistant Professor of Dance (Burmese)

Fall Faculty Concert: December 3 - 5, 8:00pm, Doane Dance Performance Space featuring works by dance faculty Stafford Berry, Jr., Sandra Mathern-Smith and Alfred Dove. Free and open to the public.

Senior Research Concert by Dance major Tricia Smit: December 10 - 11,  7:30pm, Doane Dance Performance Space

Stafford Berry, Jr. - New Faculty member in Dance Department

The Department of Dance is pleased to announce Stafford Berry, Jr. as our new faculty member in dance. Stafford will join Denison for 2009/10. Mr. Berry is the Associate Artistic Director of the African American Dance Ensemble where he toured for 12 years, Managing Director of the Berry & Nance Dance Project, and is on the faculty of the American Dance Festival. He has taught, choreographed, and performed African rooted dance and theatre throughout the United States and the Caribbean. Mr. Berry’s awards and grants have been numerous. He received a North Carolina Arts Council Choreographers Fellowship (2000) to study in Africa with Les Ballet Africaines, the national company of Guinea, West Africa, a Cooper Foundation Grant (2002), two Five County Arts Grants from the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance in PA (2003, 2004), a Ford Foundation Grant for a collaboration with Dr. Chuck Davis (2004) and in 2008 an Emerging Artist grant from the Durham Arts Council for the creation of new music for a ballet.  His work, a combination of dance, theatre, & music, can be seen in the archives of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. He will be teaching African/ jazz dance and composition, setting an original work on students, and Introduction to African American Theatre.