COLLEGE DANCE.

New Facility for Dance

The Barbara Barker Center for Dance, located in Minneapolis and designed for the Dance Program of the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota, had its opening in May. The dance program moved into the new facility in mid-March and began classes shortly thereafter.

The 12,000-square-foot building has three studios, one of which doubles as a performance space. A spacious lobby--student lounge area links the entry to an outdoor terrace amphitheater.

UM's Department of Theatre Arts and Dance offers B.A. and B.F.A. degrees with an emphasis on modern dance as an undergraduate program. Full-time faculty includes program director Marge Maddux, Ananya Chattergea, Maria Cheng, and Joanie Smith. The program brings in four to six nationally recognized artists and scholars each year to interact with the students and the dance community.

Dance Club and Seniors in Concerts

Connecticut College in New London had its spring dance club and senior major dance concert in April and May. The dance club is an arena for the encouragement and production of student choreography. Senior dance majors included Vanessa Campos, Kate Cross, Lenore Eggleston, Zoe Klein, Amanda Kwiatkowski, Meagan LoGuidice, Katie Minor, Melissa Niemann, Jennifer Riebe, and Jaime Santora. Guest artists included Wally Cardona (whose works have been produced in seven countries and by several companies in New York City), Heidi Latsky (principal dancer and teacher with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company), Jeremy Nelson, and Eddie Taketa.

CC was the home of the American Dance Festival from 1946 to 1977. It premiered one hundred seventy-three works, including dances by Martha Graham, Jose Limon, Doris Humphrey, Alvin Ailey, Paul Taylor, and many other artists.

Last year at its international festival '98, CC presented ten on-campus performances and three free, minipreview performances in downtown New London. Artists, choreographers, and companies came from the U.S.A., Brazil, West Africa, Malaysia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Russia, and China.

CC is an independent, coeducational, liberal arts college of 1,600 undergraduates from forty-eight states and fifty countries. Sixty percent of its student body graduate with the experience of either working or studying abroad.

Dance in Pittsburgh

The spring concert of Point Park College's Playhouse Dance Company was an evening of ballet and modern dance at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. Choreographed by PPC's dance faculty--Susan Stowe, Ron Hutson, Doug Bentz, and Michele Dunleavy--the concert included a new work by each member of the faculty, as well as the classical pas de deux and five character dances from Don Quixote.

Merger in Chicago

The College for the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University and Ballet Chicago will present joint performances of the college's Youth Orchestras with Ballet Chicago's Youth Company. In the process, BC's apprentice group will become ensemble-in-residence in the school's pre-college division.

Joint works planned for the 1999-2000 season include Balanchine's Concerto Barocco, Valse Fantaisie, and excerpts from Apollo. Founded in 1987, BC opened its school in 1995 with a purely classical curriculum under the direction of former New York City Ballet principal Daniel Duell. The youth group, ranging in age from thirteen to nineteen, has appeared more than seventy times since the fall of 1997.

Artists in Concert

The Department of Dance of the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, presented a spring concert in March with two distinquished soloists: Risa Steinberg in A Celebration of Dance, and Shane O'Hara in The Nagrin Project. Daniel Nagrin's solo choreography is a moving journey through his four decades as a dancer and through the changes in modern dance itself. Rutgers offers a M.F.A., B.F.A., and, B.A. in dance and is located in Brunswick, New Jersey.