The teach-learn connection.

Rauschenberg Gift Honors Viola Farber

When Merce Cunningham invited visual artist Robert Rauschenberg to design the set for Minutiae in the 1950s, he forged a connection between visual art and dance that endures today.

Rauschenberg often traveled with the Cunningham Dance Company and came to know well its members, including Viola Farber, who later became director of the dance program at Sarah Lawrence College. When Farber died in 1998, Rauschenberg announced that he wanted to make a gift to the school in her memory.

According to Sara Rudner, who succeeded Farber, the school considered several ways to use Rauschenberg's gift, from naming a studio after Farber to creating a faculty position in her honor. Ultimately, it was decided that an artist-in-residence program was the option that would have appealed most to the dancer. "Viola Farber was not an institutional person," says Rudner. "She was a great champion of artists doing their work."

In spring 2001, choreographer Dana Reitz became the first Viola Farber Artist in Residence. For Reitz, a faculty member at Bennington College, the residency was an opportunity to create and perform new dances, working with students who designed lighting and experimented with light/movement studies, Reitz's field of professional interest.

John Jasperse is the 2001-2002 artist in residence. Jasperse, a Sarah Lawrence alumnus, has been the subject of much New York dance buzz since Baryshnikov commissioned him to create work for the White Oak Dance Project. For summer 2001, the American Dance Festival co-commissioned and presented an evening-length piece by Jasperse, Giant Empty.

"It's a great opportunity for our students to work with him," says Rudner. "A lot of dancers in New York would like that opportunity." Jasperse teaches class at Sarah Lawrence three days a week and will create a new work with the students.

Rudner emphasizes that the artists in residence are not required to teach classes. "Students have to have access to their creative process," she says, but points out that this can take a variety of forms, such as panel discussions or symposiums. "The artists come here to do their work--what they want to do," she says. "Having come out of the New York City dance scene, I know that facilitating artists' work at this time of poor funding is of vital importance."

Rauschenberg's gift is a one-time donation that Rudner hopes will last the school three or four years. "It's given our program a big boost," Rudner says. With fifty undergraduate students and ten at the graduate-study level, the Sarah Lawrence dance program is small. "We are really honored and pleased. It's all because of who Viola was and how deeply she affected the people around her."

--Karen Hildebrand

Educators in the News:

Rebecca Wright joins St. Paul's School as director of dance. She replaces Richard Rein, who resigned in July after twenty-seven years with the southern New Hampshire boarding school. Wright also serves as artistic and academic adviser for the Joffrey/New School University BFA program in dance and as artistic director of American Ballet Theatre's summer training programs.

Bene Arnold is appointed school director for the Ballet West Conservatory. Arnold, who retired in June from the University of Utah faculty (see Presstime News, Dance Magazine, June, page 44), first worked with Ballet West from 1963 to 1975, starting as ballet mistress under Willam F. Christensen when the company was known as the Utah Civic Ballet. Since 1985, she has served as rehearsal assistant for The Nutcracker.

Joan Harris receives the Award of Honour 2000 from the Norwegian Centre of the Art of Dance. Harris resided in Norway for more than twenty-five years, arriving in 1961 from England to serve as artistic director of the Norwegian National Ballet. In 1965, she founded the National Ballet School, which she directed until 1987.

Lynn Wallis, artistic director of the Royal Academy of Dance, is honored as one of six finalists for the Arts & Media category of the European Women of Achievement Awards for her work in promoting classical ballet.

Former Soviets Zhanat Baidaralin and Vera Kurmasheva join Festival Ballet Providence in Rhode Island. Baidaralin serves as company teacher, ballet master and resident choreographer; and Kurmasheva is principal of the Center for Education Core Dance Program for students ages 8 to adult. The couple immigrated to the U.S. from Kazakhstan in January 2001 after Baidaralin participated in the American Dance Festival on a grant from the U.S. State Department.

Christine Busch moves to Boston Ballet School as principal of the South Shore facility in Norwell. Most recently, Busch led the School of the Hartford Ballet and School of Dance Connecticut. Trained primarily by the Atlanta School of Ballet, she danced professionally with American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet.