After years of dedicated training and artistic pursuit, the cohort of recent graduates from the Washington University in St. Louis MFA in Dance program have triumphed in their post-graduate journey by securing full-time positions in higher education.
Founded in 2016, the WashU MFA in Dance program is the only one in the state of Missouri and draws students both nationally and internationally who seek to strengthen their professional credentials. The program combines rigorous studio training in a variety of genres, in-depth artistic development in choreography, and a top-tier liberal arts education. The program especially attracts students with intellectual curiosity who seek to understand how dance operates in a socio-political context. In her first year as Director of Graduate Studies in Dance, Associate Professor Joanna Dee Das hit the ground running, encouraging the MFA students to apply to positions in higher education and providing considerable support. She arranged mock interviews, mock job talks, and even helped negotiate job offers. The work paid off. For the first time in the history of the program, both members of the graduating cohort have secured full-time faculty positions for the fall.
Caroline Gonsalves Bertho will be on faculty at Valdosta State University in Georgia, teaching in its dance department and developing a much-needed hip hop curriculum. Emily Duggins Ehling will be on faculty in the Theatre Department at the University of Missouri, where she will be teaching, choreographing, and developing a dance curriculum.
A native of Brazil, Bertho knew from the beginning that this program was the right fit: "From the first time I talked to Christine Knoblauch-O'Neal [former Director of Graduate Studies in Dance] on Zoom—before I even applied—I felt that the community at WashU would be very welcoming for anyone….I thought we would have a lot of support from every faculty [member], and we did….it was incredible."
Such support was necessary for Bertho, Ehling, and the Performing Arts Department as a whole when the third member of their cohort, Amarnath Ghosh, had his aspirations tragically cut short when he was killed in an act of senseless violence. He had just returned from a very successful campus visit and was a finalist for a full-time position at a university. He brought beauty, love, joy, and peace to the world through his gift of dance and his spirit lives on in the lives of those he touched.
Amarnath’s death was a terrible blow to the WashU community and all who knew him. Yet in the midst of their grief and their preparations for their final concert, Bertho and Ehling continued to pursue their post-graduate dreams. Higher education positions, particularly in dance, are at a premium, and are particularly difficult to secure while still in graduate school. Nonetheless, that is what this cohort accomplished.
Ehling got her undergraduate degree from WashU in 2018 with a double-major in dance and psychology. For her undergraduate senior thesis she started City Dance, a student group that brings free dance classes into the St. Louis community—a program that continues to this day. Before returning to the Performing Arts Department, she self-produced five shows in St. Louis, worked as an independent choreographer, danced with MADCO (Modern American Dance Company), and was a founding company member with Resilience Dance Company before shifting into teaching, choreographing and dramaturgy.
“My time as an undergrad helped me expand the ways that I thought about dance more broadly, and during my time as a graduate student, I was able to place myself within this context. I intentionally took as many lecture courses as possible with Joanna [Das] because of my interest in dramaturgy,” says Ehling. “Being able to talk about and write about dance is important—being able to contextualize dance and contextualize myself and my own practice and my own aesthetics within history.” Ehling also benefited from WashU’s liberal arts approach, which encourages interdisciplinary inquiry. “The ability to take classes in the theater program gave me the chance to shape what I wanted to be studying. It gave me the opportunity to gain a lot of knowledge about theater and build an interest in the intersection between methods in dance and theater,” said Ehling. “Learning different tools and approaches to art has always been valuable to me….WashU gave me the chance to tie all of those things together and set me up to be able to build from here.”
Both students grew as pedagogues as well. “Having the opportunity to teach [through an MTE] gave me the experience of working with the students and building the syllabus in the US perspective, which is different from Brazil,” said Bertho. “Taking classes from different professors, I got to see how they each treat the syllabus, how they build their classes, how they insert readings in the curriculum, how much we can give the students with practice and theory, and how to balance and put it all together. Seeing different perspectives was very important for me to understand ways that I can build my own class.”
Before coming to WashU, Bertho graduated from Unicamp, the State University of Campinas, Brazil, studied at the Royal Academy of Dance Technic (BRA) and trained at “The H+ Hip Hop Dance Conservatory” in New York. She studied and taught Hip-Hop dance for thirteen years, mainly working with the community project “Grupo Performance de Rua” (BRA)—a non-profit Hip-Hop dance collective that produces shows, festivals, and promotes Hip Hop culture events. She has worked as a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and producer of festivals, shows, and dance films.
“The program is very enriching,” said Bertho. “It was two years that I know I will remember, for all my life. It was an amazing experience that I for sure wouldn't have had in my country, and I'm really grateful for it.”
Das has high hopes for the future. With a strong rising second-year cohort that has already won several fellowships and presented at international conferences, and an incoming cohort that includes two professional dancers from nationally-prestigious dance companies, Washington University’s MFA in Dance program is poised to continue to produce leaders in the field.
