Faculty Updates

This fall Stephen Koester created a new duet for Meghan Durham (Ohio State University) and Carl
Rogers (David Dorfman Dance Company, SUNY Brockport faculty). The dance was part of an evening of commissioned duets first performed in Ohio this past December. Steve also directed last year's über-successful SaltDanceFest featuring international artists Paul Selwyn Norton, Vicky Cortes, and Marina Mascarell. And, he is currently working with this year's all-star lineup of artists including Miguel Gutierrez, Kyle Abraham, Netta Yerushalmy and Maura Keefe on this summer’s festival.


In 2011, Pamela Geber presented her original research, “From Science to Art; Experiential Anatomy
to Improvisation and Choreography” at the IADMS’s fall conference in Washington DC and “How Do We Inspire Kinesiological Meaning-Making?” at the summer conference for the Dance Kinesiology Teachers’ Group. She has stepped into the role as Director of Undergraduate Studies at UU and is currently developing a community-based teaching venture involving university students, individuals with Down syndrome and their family members. In addition, Pamela is working with the networking organization, Dance Kinesiology Teachers' Group, on planning the upcoming meetings in summer and fall of 2013. Beyond UU, she has taught professional development at the Teachers’ Workshop for Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, and for the past 2 summers, she has co-lead visual art/dance workshops for children with local artist and educator, Kindra Fehr.

Cole Adams has been on an upgrading rampage, fundraising and working relentlessly to bring our
art and facilities into the 21st century. The spoils of his quest include grants for energy efficient LED
cyc lights in the MCD theater, new theatrical curtains for entire building, new tempest wireless headset
system, 2 New Lycian Follow spots, new wall of mirrors, ballet studio-floor replacements and he is still
going. The total in dollars of new improvements rings in around $200,000 so far. Not content just raising money for the University; Cole has lent his talents as a board member for SB dance helping them to raise over $20,000. As a teacher, Cole created and taught a new course in production for graduate students in the modern department and is currently developing an introduction to technology course for ballet freshmen to launch next year. Artistically, he serves artists large and small throughout the Salt Lake community and beyond with his technical prowess including concerts with Blood, Sweat and Tears and Olivia Newton-John, a music video for Piano Guys, John Schmidt and Steven Sharp Nelson and a very large production of the musical AIDA at the Sandy Amphitheater (just to name a few).




Suffering from insomnia? Tossing and turning in bed? Too much nightlife? Jon Scoville has just released his latest cd, A Field Guide to Sleep -- Lullabyes for Adults in collaboration with esteemed jazz pianist Art Lande. In addition he recently completed a score for Juliet Forrest of Goucher College. Jon returns to Salt Lake City in January for his 40th (and final) year. Then it's off to Brazil to work on a music project in Rio.




Meanwhile Tandy Beal has been to Shanghai, Taipei, Jakarta, Jerusalem, Macau and Seoul
working and performing with Bobby McFerrin. She recently directed a circus/a cappella singing/cuisine
adventure called Mangia del Arte. Additionally she was awarded an NEA grant to tour her production of HereAfterHere about what people think happens after we die. She will be bringing it to the Marriott Center for Dance in May. In January Tandy and Jon will celebrate 50 years of being partners & co conspirators.

Abby Lou Fiat recently choreographed a women’s trio for Repertory Dance Theatre that will be
performed in spring 2013 in their Women of Valor Concert. She has begun a phased retirement from
UU, in which she will be teaching for the next two spring semesters. Her grandson is two years old and
is continually reminding her why we dance- to fill our lives and hearts with the joy of movement and
the wonder of the imagination. We will sit down with Abby for an interview this spring to reflect on her
extraordinary career at the U.

Satu Hummasti spent summer 2011 taking workshops in St. Petersburg, Russia and New York City.
While in St. Petersburg, she set a new piece on Kannon Dance Company. She gave birth to little girl Aila on December 20, 2011 and spent Spring 2012 on maternity leave. She returned this fall creating PDC piece "Little Storms," which she hopes to show in France in Spring 2013.

Eric Handman returned to Berlin for the second time in 2012 to teach and present his newest quintet,
Torch, at the Staatlische Balletschule. He will also return for the second time to Costa Rica this
summer to create a new dance on the company members of the Departamento de Producción Escuela
Danza UNA. His choreography software team, with support from the University of Utah Technology
Commercialization Office, copyrighted and trademarked the code for a new Android app, that after a
rigorous period of focus group testing in 2013 will be re-coded for Apple’s iOS and downloadable from the app store. He also just finished shooting new footage for a dance film that he’ll begin thinking about editing in his time off.

Ellen Bromberg’s recent artistic works include: a multi-media performance piece at UC Davis
Department of Theater and Dance, entitled "and the snow fell softly on all the living and the dead…"
in memory of choreographer Della Davidson, her documentary, "Deborah Hay, Not as Deborah Hay,"
premiered at Cinedans Amsterdam in November of '11, (with numerous subsequent screenings in the US and abroad), a collaborative work with Lisa Wymore “The Somnambulist’s Dream” commissioned by the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies, UC Berkeley, and “Dancing the Green Map,” a video design for a work by Zvi Gottheiner for Repertory Dance Theater. Ellen has also received the 2012 Distinguished Innovation and Impact Award, from the University of Utah Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Vice President for Technology Venture Development, the Granada Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, UC Davis Department of Theater and Dance, Davis, CA 2011, The Townsend Center for the Humanities Fellowship Award, from the UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. She has also been a guest lecturer and panelist at The Leonardo Museum, Mills College, and Townsend Center for the Humanities, CITRIS-Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, and the Berkeley Center for New Media, Arts Research Center.

During the fall of 2011, Juan Carlos Claudio developed the first International Dance and Educational

Student Exchange Program: Panamá. The exchange was a huge success and as a result the program is receiving national recognition including a featured story in the December issue of Dance Magazine. In addition, he continues to perform with SB Dance on a regular basis, and co-directs the Saturday Studio Series for the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. Juan Carlos’ next endeavors are to continue to develop innovative community and service learning programs within the department, as well as to create new projects for the students not only nationally, but globally.

Sharee Lane spent the summer choreographing and teaching at the Snowy River Summer Dance Festival and serving as a guest artist and adjudicator for the Montana Dance Arts Association. In Spring
2012 Sharee lead the second international exchange to Berlin (link to Berlin article) and brought in
distinguished guest artist Elaine Kudo to stage “Sweet Fields” by world renowned choreographer Twyla Tharp for PDC. Since joining the modern dance department, Sharee has worked unceasingly to raise the standard of excellence in ballet among modern students utilizing her connections in the field to provide unparalleled training and networking opportunities for students. In addition she continues to grow in her contemporary choreography creating works for PDC that combine her high level of classical technical prowess with fresh exploration. Outside UU, Sharee has been a guest teacher at Ballet West and the Cincinnati ballet.

In July and August of 2012, Rob Wood served as Director of Music for the National Choreography
Intensive sponsored by Regional Dance America. A much in demand ballet accompanist, Rob travels
each year to play at national and international workshops and festivals including accompanying UU
students to Berlin last spring. Ron has also begun co-teaching Elements of Music with Jon Scoville and
now directs the graduate thesis concert.

Fall 2012 Guest Artists

In addition to a three-week residency with John Beasant at the beginning of fall semester, the Department of Modern Dance continued its guest artist series by hosting choreographers Elena
Demyanenko and Yannis Adoniou for six-week residencies, as well as welcoming distinguished alumni award recipient and independent choreographer, Keith Johnson, and presenting master classes by Royal Ballet School Assistant Director, Jay Jolley, Ririe Woodbury Artistic Director, Charlotte Boye-Christensen, and Dancers from the Trey Mcintyre Project. The throughline of inquiry inspired by this diversity of aesthetics, styles and creative processes was an in-depth investigation into movement quality.

Elena Demyanenko, a former member of the Trisha Brown dance company, initiated this line of research by bringing a somatic approach to technique classes, based in Body Mind Centering technique. Utilizing anatomical imagery, breath, meditative floor work, repetition with variation, subtle partner and self manipulation, she offered dancers a more nuanced and refined qualitative ability rooted in internal understanding.









San Francisco based choreographer and dancer Yannis Adoniou followed. His singular approach to technique class employed vocalization, improvisation, visualization, touch and the natural world combined with rigorous classical technique. Working integrally with class accompanists, he pushed dancers to discover more sensate dancing through the interpretation of vibrations and clear identification of different movement consistencies.

Both Elena and Yannis also created new choreographic works while in residence. Elena
worked collaboratively with third year graduate students to deconstruct habitual movement
patterns, and investigate their personal narratives in a piece entitled “Becoming,” that
premiered in November at the Bare Bones Graduate Concert. Yannis has choreographed a new
work "Naivete in Minor," for the Spring PDC concert that allows the performers to explore an
inner journey of sensation while sharing the personal and individually felt physicalization of
the work. With a stunning stage design infused with interactive digital technology, the piece
features many vignettes of human experience that range from the vast and chaotic to the
subtlest moments of connection between us.

Additional masterclasses have been interspersed throughout the term offering students a
glimpse of the multiplicity of voices that constitute the contemporary dance landscape and
providing them fresh opportunities to apply the skills and understandings acquired in their
technique classes to new contexts.

Currently Daniel Squires former member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company is setting a Cunningham Repertory work for Spring PDC and offering classes in Cunningham technique.

In March visiting artist Sidra Bell will be in residence to create a new work for the
senior class and teach across the curriculum.

Panama Exchange

Last spring, Assistant Professor Juan Carlos Claudio realized a longtime goal of taking modern dance out of the studio and into the international community.  Partnering with Anna Pasternak, director of Movement Exchange, a dance service organization based in Panama City, Professor Claudio launched an International Community Service Learning Program that allowed modern dance students to use their art form to meaningfully engage with another culture.  

Building on content in Prof. Claudio’s courses, Dance in Culture, Service Learning: Modern Dance, and Dance in Community, eight students from the Department traveled to Panama City for a weeklong residency that emphasized teaching, community engagement and intercultural exchange.  Envisioned as a sort of “dance without borders,” the Movement Exchange provides underserved populations with meaningful arts experiences that foster the cultivation of teamwork, self-confidence and trust, while offering college students an opportunity to augment their teaching and service experience.  

U students attended and taught classes at the University of Panama and The National School of Dance and conducted dance workshops for hundreds of at-risk youth in orphanages and elementary schools, putting in twelve-hour days. But, rather than coming home run-down from their exhausting schedule, the dancers returned with a vigor and passion that infused the Department over the remaining weeks of the spring semester.  They inspired everyone around them with stories of their amazing experience.  Encouraged by this success, Prof. Claudio will return to Panama for another exchange this spring with over double the number of students accompanying him. 

International Partnership/Berlin State Ballet School

In the spring of 2012, the Department of Modern Dance again participated in a cultural exchange with the Berlin State Ballet School in Germany.  This two-part program brought students, teachers and musicians of both schools to each others’ institutions to engage in creative inquiry, investigation and intercultural dialogue on dance and dance pedagogy.

For two weeks in April, members of the Berlin State Ballet School visited the Department.  Berlin faculty members Olaf Hofer (ballet) and Assohoto Jean-Hughes (modern) taught multiple classes to University of Utah students with musician Winni Rogel playing accompaniment on piano and djembe.  Berlin State Ballet students also had the opportunity to take class from University of Utah faculty and observe many classes across the curriculum.

In May, faculty members Sharee Lane, Rob Wood, Eric Handman and Donna White along with nine modern dance students from the Department traveled to Berlin for two weeks.  The University of Utah faculty members taught classes and showed choreography, while Utah students trained alongside dancers from the Berlin State Ballet School.

With each exchange, the partnership has grown, expanding to include more teachers, musicians and faculty, deepening relationships already established, and providing a more fertile ground for creative development.  Plans for the next exchange are already underway and may include the creation of a collaborative performance work between the two institutions.

Meet the New Faculty!

This fall, the department of modern dance welcomed two new full-time faculty members to our program, Shaun Boyle and Jessica Pearson.  Shaun replaces I-Fen Lin who returned to Taiwan last spring to have a baby and pursue a career in her home country

Part of the department’s mission; to promote student and faculty growth as professional dance artists, critical inquirers, and community members, includes a commitment to diversity.  In filling these new positions, the department not only sought artists and teachers of the highest caliber, but also individuals who would increase the diversity of the faculty and the course offerings.

Shaun and Jessica stood out as exceptional candidates, for their excellence in the field as professional dancers and scholars, and for the new aesthetics, perspectives and personal experience they each bring.  Jessica comes to the Department as a College of Fine Arts Morales Fellow.  The Raymond C. Morales Fellowship Program was created to hire Post doctorate/Post MFA fellows for 2 year positions that serve to bring diversity and additional expertise to our college.

Shaun Boyle

Assistant Professor/Lecturer

MA in Choreography, Trinity Laban Conservatoire, BFA in Dance, NYU Tisch School of the Arts

Activities: Ballet & Contemporary Technique classes, Freshman Composition, Co-director of PDC (Fall), Rehearsal Director for PDC guest artist John Beasant III, Choreographer for PDC (Spring)

Background: Shaun’s work mines the overlap between ballet and modern with specific attention to movement quality.  Drawing on her professional experience with companies such as BalletMet in Columbus, OH and Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet in New York City and her undergraduate studies at NYU, Shaun emphasizes precision and clarity in technique class.  She feels this brings a different kind of challenge to University of Utah students, but insists “they’re ready for it.”  Shaun has enjoyed the new challenges of being a new member of such a big and busy department.  She confesses it can be overwhelming at times, but that the students great energy and interest in growing make each day rewarding.  She values being in an environment where students and faculty all learn from and support each other, and she looks forward to the opportunity for her own professional development.

Find out more about Shaun

Jessica T Pearson

Raymond C. Morales Fellow

MFA in Dance Wellness, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder. BFA in Dance, Towson University

Activities: Conditioning for Dancers, Modern Technique, (Co-teacher) Dance in Culture, Co-Director PDC (Spring), (Assistant teacher) Kinesiology, Senior Capstone and guest lecturer for Movement in Culture and Dance History.

Background: The first recipient of the Morales Fellowship, Jessica was attracted to the University of Utah by Raymond Tymas-Jones’ mission to bring greater diversity and inclusion into the college of fine arts.  As a former company member with the Cleo Parker Dance ensemble, Jessica has been a part of the rich tradition of black dance in America and is excited to bring a different dance aesthetic to the program.  Her approach to technique and dance training combines her extensive experience in Horton technique with her research in dance wellness, which includes cross conditioning and somatic practices.  Jessica has also been developing a resource handbook for students looking for a greater sense of community.  

Spotlight on Guest Artist John Beasant III 

John Beasant III is an independent dance artist regularly teaching, performing, and presenting his own work across the country.  Formerly a company member for Doug Varone and Dancers and Shapiro and Smith, John has also worked with a number of up and coming choreographers and been a guest artist for The Limón Dance Company.  His recent choreographic commissions include work for The Modern American Dance Company (St. Louis, MO), and the Juilliard School (NYC, NY).

As the first guest artist of the 2012 school year, John was no stranger to the MCD studios.  Like all our modern dance majors and grads, John Beasant III, spent countless hours here honing his craft before completing his MFA in 2009, though he did most of his graduate studies in the Department in the 1990’s.  This fall in the midst of his thriving career as an independent artist, he returned to the University of Utah to work with our current students.  His 3-week residency included daily technique class, teaching advance improvisation, choreographing for PDC and a brown bag lunch discussion.  Grateful for the mentorship he received while in the department, John also carved out time to meet one on one with students to chat, answer questions and offer advice. I took advantage of one of those meeting to ask John a few questions.  Here is what he had to say.

(A) What’s it like being back?

(J) Oh it’s great!

(A) What are your impressions of the current students?

(J) They have met and exceeded my expectations!  I enjoy their curiosity and questioning.  I prefer thinking bodies and inquisitive minds.   And, they’re real responsive to feedback.

(A) Do you find students here are unique in that respect?

(J) Yeah well, this department has such a focus on contemporary dance and study.  It’s special, the level of inquiry and the intelligent bright dancers.  There’s a real fostering of research development too.  

(A) What can you tell me about your PDC piece?

(J) Well, one constant in my work is the human element, relationships and discoveries about the human condition.  I am always looking for something true and honest.  In this piece each dancer has a unique personal journey traveling through intimate and environmental spaces, to ultimately find a common ground as a community of people. It’s really a celebration of the work and play of artists.

(A) If you could pass on just one piece of advice to the students here what would it be?

(J) Be yourself, find something true, unique, and special inside the process for you.

Welcome!
University of Utah Department of Modern Dance
Newsletter, vol. 2 (Fall 2012)

Much has happened since our last newsletter in 2010-11.  The fledgling initiatives of two years ago have become integral parts of the departmental architecture today, helping to set our current course and lay the groundwork for future growth.  SaltDance Fest completed its second successful installment last summer bringing international artists Marina Mascarell, Paul Selywn Norton and Vicky Cortes together for an immersive creative experience with participants from the dance dept. and guests from around the globe.  The Dance Minor and Screendance Certificate programs are now thoroughly ensconced and Steve Koester has dropped the interim label and officially become Department Chair.  

Formerly fresh faces, Sharee Lane and Rob Wood, have become familiar and join us in welcoming the new new faculty Shaun Boyle and Jessica Pearson.  Jessica comes to us for two years as the recipient of the Raymond C. Morales post graduate Fellowship.  Shaun takes over from I-Fen Lin, our fabulous ballet and contemporary dance teacher who left the department back in May.  I-Fen returned to her native Taiwan and gave birth to a baby girl in August.  We miss her dearly and wish her new family all the best.  

The announcement of the impending retirement of Abby Fiat sent shock waves through the department last spring.  The beloved faculty member, great spirit and a guiding light of the department will return for two more spring semesters before her official farewell.  Needless to say her absence augurs a period of transition for the department.   But, Steve Koester, not one to fear change, has embraced this time of ambiguity.  Seeing her absence not as a hole to be filled but as open space, he has not rushed to find a replacement.  Instead Mr. Koester has taken advantage of the time and space in the schedule to pilot an innovative approach to artistic exchange and staffing.

In the 2012-2013 academic year, a series of guest artists will teach through the curriculum for 3-6 weeks at a time. This approach offers a promising alternative to the traditional model of the guest artist, who teaches a few workshops, sets a work on a handful of students and then moves on.  Instead over these eight months, guests John Bessant III, Elena Demyanenko, Yannis Adoniou, Sidra Bell and Daniel Squire will teach technique classes and/or creative workshops as well as set choreography benefiting the entire student body.  

2012-2013 has gotten off to a rollicking start.  We can’t wait to share with you all the adventures, accomplishments and accolades already accrued by our faculty and students.  Many thanks to all who have contributed to our program.  Your support is invaluable to our students and our future.  We hope you will help keep us up to date, let us know about your current work and research.  

Please join us in two weeks for our next installment: In the Studio with John Beassant!

- Alysia Ramos