The house that Willam built: the dance legacy of University of Utah continues to evolve.

NESTLED IN THE WASATCH RANGE of the Rocky Mountains, Salt Lake City, Utah, is an unexpectedly lively center for dance. Firmly rooted at its core is the University of Utah, where a historically rich dance program builds on more than a century of dance tradition and innovation.

"People tend to think we're in the middle of nowhere," says Scott Marsh, the university's modern dance department chair, "when in fact we're embedded within this very vital dance community."

Marsh goes so far as to compare Salt Lake City's professional dance environment to what one might typically find in a larger city like Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, or New York, but with one big difference. "[Students] are not distracted by the harsh reality of a big city," he says. "We have the best of both worlds."

The university's dance legacy began in the 1890s when Maud May Babcock first offered dance instruction through the physical education department. Elizabeth Hayes established the modern dance major in 1948. And in 1951, Willam Christensen started what is credited as the first ballet program to be offered at an American university. (Christensen died on October 14, 2001. See Transitions, page 74.)

In turn, the university had its hand in the formation of three Salt Lake-based professional dance companies that now provide students with performance opportunities as well as jobs after graduation. Willam Christensen, together with Glenn Walker Wallace, founded Utah Civic Ballet in 1963, which later became Ballet West (see page 44). In 1964, modern dance faculty members Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury (now professors emeritae) started Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. Repertory Dance Theatre got off the ground in 1966 as an artists-in-residence program at the university, instigated by Virginia Tanner, who also started the creative dance program.

The university's ballet and modern dance departments function as two cooperative yet fully autonomous departments under the College of Fine Arts and are housed together within the Marriott Center for Dance. Completed in 1989, the Marriott Center features a 333-seat theater, six dance studios, classrooms, production workshops, and a conditioning clinic.

With more than 250 dance students enrolled in BFA and MFA degree programs and twenty-six faculty members, it's one of the largest university dance programs in the U.S. However, it's the specialization of the dance departments that sets the University of Utah apart from other university dance programs.

"The modern department can really do modern and the ballet department can really do ballet," says Marsh, who succeeded Phyllis Haskell in 1997. (Haskell is now dean of the College of Fine Arts and associate vice president for the arts.) For instance, each department maintains its own student performing group: Utah Ballet, directed by ballet Associate Professors Maureen Laird and Richard Wacko (Wacko also directs the ballet department's Character Dance Ensemble), and Performing Dance Company, directed by modern dance Associate Professor Brent Schneider.

Carol N. Iwasaki recently replaced Barbara Hamblin as chair of the department of ballet. Hamblin stepped down in June 2001 after thirteen years at the helm (see The Teach-Learn Connection, Dance Magazine, June 2001, page 66), yet remains active as advisor and teacher. It was under Hamblin that the ballet department initiated an emphasis in teaching and in character dance. Iwasaki was with Wichita State University in Kansas for eleven years teaching and directing the dance division program in the School of Performing Arts.

Faculty members place as much emphasis on academic and interdisciplinary experiences as they do on preparing students for a professional dance careen "We realize that everyone does not become a professional dancer," says Laird. "You have to be honest with them. Putting all your eggs in one basket is not the best thing."

Students are encouraged to explore a variety of experiences on campus to ensure their education is well rounded. "There's a whole university out there and a whole world," says Laird. "We really believe that an arts education is only going to benefit whatever you do, and it will make [the] psychological transition from dance much smoother."

With that goal in mind, the university is now forging into the frontier of technology and dance. Web design, computer media, and digital editing courses taught by Assistant Professor Ellen Bromberg are part of the modern dance curriculum. Ballet graduate students use Life Forms, a computer animated technology, in their advanced choreography classes. And as part of resume and job search training, both modern dance and ballet majors learn to produce CD-ROMs with moving-image samples of their dancing.

"It's really about bridging the art forms," says Bromberg, who is part of a collaborative Internet project called ADAPT (Association for the Development of Dance and Performance Telematics) that conducts monthly online dance events with four other universities. As our society becomes more of an image/screen-based culture, Bromberg says, "bringing this media to dance is part of a process of evolution."

To learn more, contact the University of Utah Department of Ballet at 801/581-8231, Department of Modern Dance at 801/581-7327, or visit www.finearts.utah.edu.

A Role for Children

In 1949, the University of Utah received a Rockefeller Grant that allowed Utah native Virginia Tanner to establish the Virginia Tanner Creative Dance Program, an open enrollment school for creative and modern dance training for children ages 2 1/2 to 18.

Housed on campus since its beginning, VTCDP officially joined the University of Utah modern dance department in February 2000. University modern dance students and elementary education majors may participate in VTCDP teaching apprenticeships with classes for children overcoming physical and emotional challenges, lecture demonstrations in area elementary schools, parent-and-child movement classes for nondancers, and a pilot program to make dance a regular part of elementary school curricula.

When Tanner died in 1979, Mary Ann Lee took over as program director and artistic director of the school's 280-member performing group, Children's Dance Theatre. Lee, who studied at VTCDP as a child, teaches elementary dance instruction for modern dance department seniors and a drama and dance course for education majors. The school has an enrollment of more than 1,000 children.

For more information, call 801/581-7374 or visit www.dance.utah.edu/vtcdt.

Jessica Romine Peterson earned a BFA in ballet and a BA in journalism from the University of Utah. She writes a weekly column on fine and performing arts for The Park Record in Park City, Utah.