Cap & gown: South-Central College Festival - college dance instruction - includes related article on issues facing dance students - Panel Discussion

Dance Magazine, Jan, 1997 by Sandi Combest

At the South-Central regional festival of the American College Dance Festival Association last March, a panel of four teachers from Arkansas and Texas discussed some of their concerns for today's students. Their topics included preparation of the performer, career opportunities, the dovetailing of academic and dance programs, the changing student body, the effect of budget cuts, and the lure of materialism away from the arts that is exerted over male students.

Preparation

SANDI COMBEST: We prepare students for careers in modem dance, but our students also take daily classes in ballet and are permitted to take jazz and tap dance. Our program is strongly focused on developing the student's creative abilities - which is especially important in today's world - and on an overall somatic or holistic approach. I think that it is important that the students understand themselves in dance intellectually, physically, and spiritually, and that they are sensitive to their own nature. We have faculty who teach the methodologies addressing the holistic approach because we are very concerned about the student knowing her- or himself

B.J. BRAY: Our program includes technique classes in ballet, modem dance, jazz, and tap dance, as well as a choice of courses in choreography.

ELLEN PAGE GARRISON: Our program emphasizes both ballet and modem dance and is strongly based in technique. We also have a strong emphasis on the creative aspects of choreography and composition. Our philosophy is that if you are going to be in dance, you need experience, training, and a working knowledge of performing, teaching, and choreography. Technical theater, aesthetics, and teaching methods are included, and there are opportunities to take jazz, cultural dance, repertory, and numerous other courses. Because technique is based upon knowledge of the body, students are required to take courses in anatomy and physiology, as well as to receive training in various body-work therapies.

DANA NICOLAY: Performance and choreography are emphasized and there are a lot of opportunities to choreograph, although most of our concerts are choreographed by faculty members. Our degree programs are supported by a number of courses in dance history, folk, social, and international dance forms. Physiology and kinesiology classes are required of dance majors, who get as many performances as we can give them.

Our school history finds our students going into the teaching field in high schools where the most consistent employment can be found.

Employment

S. C.: When I am asked by my administration where our students can obtain jobs, they are really asking me to assess and justify our existence as an academic discipline. My answer is: Ask, where do majors in other disciplines find work? I think that dance in higher education gives students the opportunity to know and direct themselves into a myriad of lifetime opportunities as well as to become professional dancers or choreographers. Our education gives them opportunities to do something once their dancing stops without their having to return to college.

E. P. G.: As a result of a reunion of our students and a self-study report, I was amazed to discover how many of our graduates are working throughout the United States and Europe, in major and minor companies, as choreographers, artistic directors, university program directors, in private studios, and in teaching. Many are lighting designers and costumers.

Parents always ask what can be done with a degree in dance. We can only give them the best training and then they have to find their place. We don't know what tomorrow will be. Everything is in flux. You create a job by proposing something, taking the appropriate steps, and applying for positions that are already in place.

D.N.: Dancers don't dance because of money and, in any case, there is very little out there. Because of that, we have developed a sense of resourcefulness in taking advantage of what is available to us. The discipline involved in training our bodies to do what we want them to do when we want them to do it is something that carries over in the ability to understand the system of knowledge that is our body and apply that to other bodies of information. The result is an ability to recognize information with subtlety, and to refine and recognize variations in quality and nuance. Those things apply to everything. We have graduates who choreograph, become physiotherapists, teach high school drill teams, or are in university positions. There are many opportunities in musical theater because of our dance-singing-drama musical theater program.

Academics

S. C.: The academic program assists our students in offering physics and anatomy courses as alternatives to botany and biology. This enhances their understanding of all the dance technique courses.

B. J. B.: Our goal is to give our students a broad knowledge of dance as an art form and help them to acquire as much technique as they can. Our primary focus is on their growth and development.