American College Dance Festivals - Brief Article

Dance Magazine, Dec, 1997 by Marian Horosko

The American College Dance Festival Association has enjoyed record-breaking regional festival attendance, outstanding adjudicated concerts, thought-provoking exchanges, and invigorating master classes since 1995, when 2,700 students from around the country participated. ACDFA's attendance continues to steadily increase and hopeful participants are regrettfully turned away because of space and time limitations.

The burden of success falls upon ACDFA's executive director, Paul J. Organisak, who looks forward to the organization's twenty-fifth anniversary in May of 1998, its festival season, and the eighth national college dance festival--a biannual event that takes place at the Terrace Theater of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. The first ACDFA national college festival was held in 1981 at the Kennedy Center in conjunction with the Kennedy Center Education Program and George Washington University. Adjudicators for the first festival were Pauline Koner, Murray Louis, and Clay Taliaferro.

"We have maintained our mission," Organisak says, "to support and affirm the role of dance in higher education through sponsorship of regional and national college and university dance festivals. ACDFA is the only national service organization committed solely to supporting and promoting the wealth of talent and creativity that is so prominent throughout the college and university dance community."

The regional festivals feature three days of master classes in all forms of dance, lecture-demonstrations, and workshops. These festivals are the primary means for college and university dance programs to perform outside their own academic setting and, as a result, be exposed to college dance on the national and the local level.

Central to the educational mission of ACDFA is the adjudication process whereby students and faculty receive feedback concerning their work from a panel of nationally recognized dance professionals in an open and constructive environment. Some of the professionals who have participated in the regional and national adjudication process are: Edward Villella, Bella Lewitzky, Melissa Hayden, Paul Taylor, Viola Farber, Charles "Honi" Coles, Benjamin Harkarvy, Sophie Maslow, Chuck Davis, Mel Wong, Carolyn Adams, Pearl Primus, Yvonne Chouteau, Peter Sparling, Ann Barzel, Alwin Nikolais, Phyllis Lamhut, and David Parsons.

Historically, colleges have played a major role in the unprecedented development of dance since the 1960s. It was not until 1971, however, that the concept of a national organization was presented by Jean Erdman and Betty Lind. Plans were under the leadership of Lydia Joel, former editor of Dance Magazine, and Jeanne Beaman, director of dance at the University of Pittsburgh, who agreed to host the first regional festival in 1973. In 1985 ACDFA's Scholarship Program was developed and administrated by Betsy Carden. By 1988 scholarships, valued at more than $15,000 for summer study, were granted to festival participants. By 1989, the program had expanded to include twenty-five cooperating institutions that offered summer scholarships valued at over $27,000; and in 1992, over forty scholarships to twenty institutions were offered.

Since 1981, at the first and subsequent biannual national festivals, Dance Magazine has presented cash awards to an outstanding performer and an outstanding choreographer selected by ACDFA adjudicators. In 1996, the levels of performance and choreography were so high that there were two awardees in each category: performers Amy Behm, of the University of Minnesota, and Tam Le, of Washington University in St. Louis; and choreographers Sara Wookey, of Ohio State University, and Paul Matteson, of Middlebury College.

Related Article: ACDFA's 1998 Schedule of Regional Festivals

Southwest: January 10-13, Orange Coast Community College, Costa Mesa, CA; New England: February 12-15, Boston University; Northwest: February 25-March 1, University of Wyoming; South Central: March 4-7, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nocogdoches, TX; Great Lakes: March 5-8, Northern Illinois University; Mid-Atlantic: March 25-29, University of Maryland at College Park; Northeast: March 25-29, Ohio State University; Southeast: April 1-5, Huntingdon College, Montgomery, AL.

The VIII National College Dance Festival and 25th Anniversary Celebration will be held May 19, 20, and

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