Coker's Dance concert theme is Vantage Points

The Coker College Dance Department will open their Spring Concert called Vantage Points at 7:15 on Thursday evening. Here is an announcement that was recently distributed by Erin Leigh, assistant professor - dance.:

Vantage Points Opens Thursday
The Dance Program is proud to present Vantage Points, the 2012 Spring Dance Concert, this Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The show begins with a pre-performance show and photo exhibit at 7:15 in Dance Studio 119 followed by the formal concert in the Watson Theater.

Dance Concert includes three Senior Thesis Projects

The concert is composed of works by Coker College dance faculty, Erin Leigh and Ashley Suttlar Martin, guest artists David Dorfman and Terrance Henderson, and senior thesis projects from Devin Jenning, Ali Nelson, and Meagan Stone. The evening provides an eclectic blend of perspectives or “vantage points” such as a 10 X10 cage or an 8’ tall platform, both designed and constructed by theater professor, David Lynn Dawson. A photo exhibit from Coker College alum John Shearer, video projections, and story telling complete this exciting evening.

Dancers would love to see you there
Please come out and support the dancers and choreographers who have worked so hard to put this great show together. We look forward to seeing you!

Coker 101 with David Dorfman Dance Company

The David Dorfman Dance Company has been on the Coker College campus for the past couple of days. What an amazing opportunity this has been for the dancers and for many others in the Coker community who have been involved in classes with this company.

About an hour ago one of the dancers stopped by to say hello as she was leaving one of the classes. Earlier I happened to see a Facebook status where she was talking about how much working with these dancers means to her. As we talked I said, 'so, you have enjoyed David Dorfman.' Talk about and immediate and from the heart response - "I have so loved being with him and his dancers," she said with a bit of a lump in her throat.

This evening the David Dorfman Dance Company is putting on a concert called the Prophets of Funk. This concert is one of the major arts events for Hartsville and there is no question it is bring an idea of modern dance movement that will be leaving an impact on the audience. Angela Gallo and Erin Leigh, who teach the dance program at Coker, have both known David Dorfman for some time and have been very enthused about this visit to the campus and the community. The group even plans a quick question and answer get together at the Midnight Rooster of Hartsville on Friday morning.

In the Writing for the Media class this morning we were discussing potential story ideas for the "Coker Beat." One of the ideas offered was the dance company's involvement on campus. I happened to mention to three of the golfers who were sitting near each other that for the dancers having a professional company of this caliber on campus was much like having one of the top touring pros on campus. Perhaps the major difference is these dancers are involved directly in teaching and working with students -- majors and non majors. They are conveying their craft through actual movement; not just making an appearance. It is events and experiences like this one that are often tough to assess but are the activities that provide life-long memories for those who become involved. I am certainly not a person who knows dance or who has much luck with "movement" but I am one who is moved by the difference this kind of experience provides for Coker students and for members of the community who take advantage of Hartsville being a college town.

Just because I think it makes sense, I do want to mention that the David Dorfman Company visit to Coker and Hartsville is being partially underwritten with grants from the South ARTS Dance Touring Initiative in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, ARTWORKS and the Hartsville-Coker Concert Association.

Facets in Time = Fall Dance Concert

caption for photo: Following the dance concert Angela Gallo, associate professor of dance, had the choreographers answer questions about their pieces from interested members of the audience.


The Fall 2011 Student Choreography Showcase opened in the Watson Theater on the Coker College campus on Thursday evening. It will continue at 7:30 p.m. on both Friday and Saturday nights, October 7 and 8.

The dancers go by my office door all day, all week, including weekends. This close proximity to the Coker College Dance program has helped me become a dance fan. This year's Fall Choreography Concert is another event that makes me glad I am a fan. I hear people say that modern dance is not for everyone. That may be but performances I watch by the Coker dancers make me wonder why. Modern (heck, dance in general) is a complete performance with exquisite movement, intrepid imagination, powerful images and intriguing story lines. And, much of the interpretation is generally left up to the viewer -- providing frameworks for us to build our own stories. The student choreography is an example of that thesis and it was enjoyable watching it performed in the Fall Concert.

Males have long been a part of the dance program at Coker but to have four guys on stage at the same time almost made it feel like we had a visiting company. "Mental Enslavement" was the title of the piece choreographed by Italy Welton and performed by Dache Green, Ty Rogers, Daniel Stevenson and Keon Wilson.

"Break Out" was a duo of Kelsey Grimm and Kaycee Weaver and they were the choreographers for the piece. Watching the performances on Thursday evening it struck me how the pedagogy of project-based learning plays out in this student choreography. Two of the pieces had multiple choreographers and the collaboration involved in the creative process has to be a great learning opportunity.

"Bitter Words and Forgiving Hearts" was the other multi-choregraphed piece as the three dancers - Megan Stone, Devin Jennings and Alicia Nelson were also the choreographers. That piece closes the show.

Other pieces selected for this Fall performance included: "Dying to Live", choregraphed by Akhira Ansari and performed by Akhira Ansari, Devin Jennings, Chekera Lucas, Andria McFadden, Sarah McNamee, Alicia Nelson and Cheyenne Wiseman; "Visceral Instinct" was choregraphed by Devin Jennings and performed by Devin and my one-word response as she finished was "Wow." Ty Rogers choregraphed "Time for Today" and the dancers for that piece included Akhira Ansari, Ashley Lesage, Chekera Lucas, Ty Rogers and Kirsten Sanders. Cheyenne Wiseman choreographed and performed "Dover."

The next major dance event on the Coker Campus and in Hartsville will be the October 20th performance by the David Dorfman Dance company in a show titled "Profits of Funk."

Dance Senior's Piece Performed at College Dance Festival

Barbara Steadman of Coker College's Marketing Communication office shared the following story -- wish I also had the photos that accompany it but I hope the link gets you to the story with photos. I think I told the dance instructors that this feels like a sports conference championship -- in an arts context.

Coker Senior’s Dance about Change is Performed in South East Conference Dance Festival

HARTSVILLE, S.C. – March 8, 2011 – Coker College dance student Hannah Beard’s senior thesis project “Series: The 21st Multiple” was one of 10 dances (chosen out of 45) to be performed at the gala concert of the American College Dance Festival Association’s South East Conference at Florida State University this week.

Beard’s selection represents the first time that a Coker College student’s work has been selected for the gala.

“Series: The 21st Multiple,” which Beard says is about the constancy of change, was performed during the spring dance concert at Coker College in February.

“We’ve all heard that change is constant,” said Beard. “For humans, our bodies’ cells regenerate roughly every seven years. We become brand new people every seven years, whether change is visible or not. Change is constant. How we embrace change is up to us.”

Beard, a senior dance major with a business administration minor, started dancing when she was three. As a senior at York High School in York, S.C., she traveled to Coker to audition for a talent-based dance scholarship, which she received.

With a concentration in performance and choreography, she has performed in various faculty and student pieces, choreographed dances for shows and completed dance residencies with guest artists from all over the world.

“During the past few years, it has been wonderful to watch Hannah find and hone her artistic voice,” said Angela Gallo, an Assistant Professor of Dance at Coker. “She has become an extremely versatile dancer and a strong choreographer. She has also become a leader and an ambassador for Coker’s dance program.”

In May, Hannah traveled to France to study abroad for two weeks. With her European Contemporary Dance class, she performed site-specific dance in Paris on the Viaduc des Arts, a former railroad viaduct that has been transformed into a garden walkway. Site-specific dance is created to exist in a certain place and can be influenced by the surrounding environment.

Beard’s Honors Project, titled “On Site: Every Rehearsal is a Performance, and Every Performance has an Audience,” involves extensive research on the art as well as creating, staging and showcasing her own site-specific dance around the Coker campus at locations such as the dining hall and the library, in part to promote Performing Arts at Coker.

The American College Dance Festival Association sponsors regional conferences and a national dance festival to provide a venue for students and faculty to engage in three days of performances, workshops, panels and master classes taught by instructors from around the region and country. The conferences also provide an opportunity for students and faculty to have their dance works adjudicated by a panel of nationally recognized dance professionals in an open and constructive forum.

Culminating with the presentation of pieces selected for their exemplary artistic quality, the conferences offer a unique chance for college and university dance programs to perform outside their own academic setting and be exposed to the diversity of the national college dance environment.

Adjudicators at this year’s festival in Florida are Mary Cochran, chair and artistic director of the dance department of Barnard College of Columbia University; Zvi Gotheiner, ZviDance founder and artistic director and company teacher for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City; and Bebe Mille, professor of dance at Ohio State University.

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Coker College readies undergraduates for personal and professional success through a distinctive four-year program that emphasizes a practical application of the liberal arts as well as hands-on and discussion-based learning within and beyond the classroom. Coker is ranked among the “Best Colleges” in the South by U.S. News & World Report as well as The Princeton Review. Located in Hartsville, S.C., Coker is within two hours of the cultural, financial and recreational resources of Charlotte, Columbia, Charleston and Myrtle Beach.

Dance Concert at Coker -- TRANSFORMATIONS

The following is a release from Coker's Barb Steadman about this weekend's College Dance Concert at the Watson Theater on the Coker College campus.

Dance Program to Present “Transformations
The Coker College Dance Program will present “Transformations: A Faculty and Guest Artist Dance Concert” Feb. 24, 25 and 26, each evening at 7:30 p.m., in the Watson Theater in the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Performing Arts Center.
“The dance program was thrilled when the guest company Doug Varone and Dancers from New York City was able to extend its residency at Coker this past fall,” said Associate Professor of Dance and coordinator of Coker’s dance program Angela M. Gallo. “While they were here, Mr. Varone introduced the beautiful work ‘Bench Quartet’ to our students, who are truly looking forward to this opportunity to share it with our community.”
In addition to “Bench Quartet,” the concert will feature six other very different dance works. It will include, for example, “Loneliness Fragment,” a mysterious dance theater work set by Brazilian choreographer Lara Cerqueira.
Another piece, “Particle Influence,” choreographed by Gallo, showcases a contemporary ballet work that incorporates the interactive video software "Isadora." In this piece, video projections accompany the dancers’ exploration of energy as it is distorted though the physics concept of “spacetime.”
Set to a sound collage composed by choreographer Erin Leigh, an assistant professor of dance at Coker, "Just Passing Through" seeks to represent those brief encounters we have with others as we are traveling through a place. The choreography was based on the uniqueness of the cast and is a collaboration of movement invention by the dancers and Leigh.
The concert will also feature the senior thesis projects of Hannah Beard and Kayla Webb. Beard, inspired by the impressionist paintings of Monet, has created a piece that explores change. Webb will present an especially moving piece that deals with forms of child abuse.
Finally, Coker alumna Heather Watkins will perform a set titled “Wild Chile” that offers a glimpse back to the 1960s, the glory days of Rock.
Tickets are $5 for general admission. Admission is free for Coker faculty, staff and students. For more information, please contact Dance Program Coordinator Angela M. Gallo at 843-383-8381 or agallo@coker.edu.

Doug Varone Dancers Entertain & Educate

The Coker College Dance Department has been hosting the Doug Varone Dance Company the past couple of days. It has been interesting to watch the energy and enthusiasm they area creating. Around noon on Friday there was some unusual activity in the halls of the Performing Arts Center. Coker Dancers were creating movements under the direction of members of the Company. They were up against time and their individual creativity.

At just about the same time Professor Jean Grosser had her Basic Design class in the large dance studio and those students (non dancers) were involved in creating movements based on ideas and patterns discussed earlier in the class.(I missed that part.) It was amazing to the fun and understanding unfolding as these students reached beyond comfort zones to create something new in their personal frames of reference.

And, then on Friday night the Company put on one of their educational shows they call "Stripped" at the Black Creek Arts Council Gallery. The name of this exercise is derived from the idea that Doug Varone tries to take the mystery out of dance creation by stripping away or uncovering some of the thought processes that choreographers bring to their art. Some of the Coker dancers got to perform with the Professional Company and this was an entertaining and educational fun night.

The large performance is set for Saturday night (tonight) November 13 on the stage of the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Performing Arts Center on the Coker College campus. Tickets are available for $15 adults and $7 children with Coker students getting in free with an ID. The show begins at 7:30 -- this company is talented, creative, and professional -- this is BIG CITY entertainment.

Coker Dancers work with Brazillian Performer

Several Coker dancers were busy on Sunday afternoon working on learning a new Contemporary Dance piece from Iarra Ciequera, a guest artist who is in residence and teaching on the Coker Campus this entire week. I got the opportunity to see just a small section of the dance that is involving breaking bonds and boxes. This piece is going to make its Hartsville stage debut in the Spring Dance Concert, which will be 2/24.25 and 26th.

Happened to be in my office this past Sunday and noticed that dancers were busy not only learning this new choreography but also working with a variety of other pieces that will be part of the Fall Dance concert. Weekends, apparently, are not off-days for dancers.

Saturday and dancers at Coker College learning a new piece

Dancers, like athletes, don't always get weekends off. On January 23, this group of dancers was busy for much of the day in the large dance studio working on a piece being introduced by guest artist, Julie Mulvihill. The piece a light-hearted jitterbug reminiscent of early Charleston seemed to be getting a lot of energy from the dancers, even late on Saturday afternoon. The piece will be performed later in the year at the Coker Dance Concert. (The video is only a snippet of the entire piece but video always seems to get a bit more interest in a blog.)Mulvihill is an instructor of dance at Georgia College and State University. Dance Professors Angela Gallo and Erin Leigh of Coker regularly bring in guest artists to work with the Coker College dancers to ensure they are getting a variety of dance experiences and philosophies.

Coker College Dancers in Dress Rehearsal tonight

Sometimes people who have not been to a college dance program will look at me a little strange when I urge them to attend because of what they can learn about communication. Since joining Coker back in 2000, I have come to appreciate dance not only as an art form but also as a communication medium. I will never know anything about choreography but after every dance performance or showcase I come away amazed at the depth of communication that results from an intricately choreographed piece. This week the dance showcase involves two senior thesis presentations that are certain to be striving for that communication depth. Being able to experience new forms of communication, different forms of art and discussion forums are some of the reasons being part of this Coker learning community is so important a part of my life.

"Change in Motion" is the theme of the Coker College Fall Dance recital that will be performed on campus in the Watson Theater on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 p.m. Here is the announcement shared with faculty by Angela Gallo, assistant professor of dance:

This Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8pm the Dance Program is proud to present Change in Motion- The Fall Student Choreography Showcase in the Watson Theater.

The show will feature the senior thesis projects of Jessica Welch and Corrine Sutton, as well as six other works by choreographers Hannah Beard, Kayla Webb, Jasmine Stevenson, Tara Haynes, Paige ManWaring and Alicia Nelson.

It is an exciting show that will feature many styles of dance. Please come out and support the dancers and choreographers who have worked so hard to put this great show together.

Megan Stone, Coker Dance, in SUN NEWS story

Meagan Stone is a Coker student working in Myrtle Beach this summer. She is one of the college students asked by a SUN NEWS reporter if they have advice for recent high school grads. This is her response and there is a link to the full story in the blog.

Meagan Stone
After graduating, Stone went to Coker College in Hartsville to major in dance and choreography. She came back to the Grand Strand for the summer and is working at Freestyle Music Park dancing in the show "Flip 5 Live."

"Don't let people stop you from meeting your goals, and no matter what comes your way, be positive in life. Don't stay with a crowd you've known for a while, like high school friends. The college experience is to make new friends and to expand the horizons."

Academic Karaoke Discusses Dance Research

One of the really interesting aspects of being on the Coker College campus is the opportunity to hear what kinds of work and research other faculty are doing. In truth, there are not many forums available for that kind of interchange in the regular course of a day, week, month or semester on many campuses. A little more than a year ago the former Dean came up with a concept that came to be called Academic karaoke. It is an opportunity for faculty who have been on sabbatical, or who have developed some recent research or written a recent paper to share their work. One of the bright spots of this type of presentation that it is also open to students. It is an opportunity and some people take advantage.

This recent Friday afternoon Wanda Ebright, Coker associate professor of dance, had her sabbatical last year and that got her tuning into the variety of research possibilities. She shared some of those avenues and some of her thinking about why. Her primary avenue of interest is ballet and she is hoping to pioneer some research into classical ballet companies composed of African American or black dancers. While she has her MFA from Florida State and in her field this is the terminal degree, she is also pursuing a doctorate in dance studies from Texas Woman's Universitye.

She was able to share a lot of her thinking with several faculty, staff and a good number of dance students. In Hartsville, we like to talk about our town as The Art of Good Living and we urge visitors here with the line, "expect pleasant surprises." Each of the academic karaoke events I have been too have revealed enjoyable pleasant surprises -- this was an interesting afternoon.

Thinking about assessment...

Assessment is a major element of a college campus. Today, I was thinking a good deal about assessment as we did the final presentations in my Mass Communication class. We only had five minutes per presentation and the ONLY is important here. Ricardo started off the presentations with his summary of a paper on the I-Phone. That started discussion that was moving a five-minute presentation to almost double and we had a lot of presentations left. Kimberly then used a video montage to begin a discussion of her paper, which covered product placement in music videos. The videos grabbed attention and then the product got attention and the discussion started again. Often during the semester I have wished to spark such discussion among the class and today, as it was focusing on key concepts, I had to do the unthinkable and say -- "Sorry" we have to get everyone in and there isn't time. Obviously, the next time I will have to plan better because the discussion was on target and on task and I hated to have it end. Often, I feel that way about the semester in lots of my classes.

Later today there was another type of 'assesment' as the Dance Department and Theater Department held an "Informal" demonstrating some of the concepts that students had been working on in various classes throughout the semester and some of the other groups and talents on campus. The Dance Informal is always a fun, entertaining event that provides some on-stage experience and a chance for both class and personal assessment. Maybe I need to start inviting people to the final speeches from Speech Class??



And, last evening the Coker Singers performed in their Christmas Program, which was a masterful delight. I have snippet of video from this "Celebrate the Season" performance event but the video sound quality is so BADDDD it would not be fair to the group to use it. The Singers were fantastic.

And, while on the topic of assessment, this is the final week of the semester with tomorrow the final day of classes with exams beginning Saturday morning. Always a paper due, always a test to take, always an impression to make -- college may not be that different from the real world.