During the first weekend in April, David Marchant, Professor of Practice in Dance traveled with 10 students including all five of our graduate students to this year's Regional American College Dance Conference in Oklahoma, a 4-day event where our students performed, taught, and took master classes.
According to Marchant our students were amazing as they stood out across so many of the conference events. According to Marchant:
Emily Duggins Ehling and Carol Bertho collaborated the making of a new dance with the students who had planned to go titled Repeat— demonstrating to me a core spirit of the experience of inclusion by giving everyone present an opportunity to perform.
Both Carol Bertho and Erin Morris submitted films for the Screendance Exhibit.
And our graduate students taught many master classes, often reported by students at other schools to be “their favorite class at the conference”. They shared their amazing and diverse expertise with classes in Hip Hop (Carol), Jazz dance (Kendra), Modern Technique, Composition (Emily), Classical Indian dance (Amarnath), Jazz Roots and Lindy Hop partnering (Erin)— many of them taught 2 times. In total they shared 12 classes with the community.
According to Marchant, "The hosts expresses to me personally their gratitude for this generosity and how essential these were to the success of the conference."
Both of the Adjudicated dances received incredible comments from 3 panelists for the skill of the the students artwork and skill of performance.
Marchant's summed up his excitement for the trip with these words, "I want you to know that WU Dance shined. It was a pleasure to witness our students. The grads were particularly amazing individually and as a team, and was among the best recruiting efforts for our graduate program as many undergraduates approached me with interest in applying."
