Dancers from 26 difference schools will flock to OU this weekend to participate in the East Central American College Dance Association Regional Conference.
After Ohio State University was unable to host the East Central American College Dance Association regional conference at the last minute, Ohio University stepped up.
This will be the second year in a row that OU will host the conference. Holding the conference for multiple years consecutively is new to the Division of Dance. However, OU has been home to the event five or six times in the past 20 years, said Teresa Holland, coordinator for the conference.
The event will take place this weekend, with some dance majors opting to stay on campus instead of heading home for spring break. Faculty, guest artists, graduates and undergraduate students from 26 universities will travel to OU to participate.
“Its not mandatory … I’ve always chosen to stay because it’s a perfect way for me to expose myself,” said Annie Scott, a senior studying dance. “(Since I’m) graduating this year, making connections and meeting people that can hopefully give me a job someday, or connect me with someone who can give me job would be fantastic … it’s definitely a fantastic experience.”
Throughout the day faculty and guests artists that come in will be teaching master classes that allows students to get a different perspective of dance. There will be many types of classes including technique classes, yoga, hip-hop, ballet and African dance.
“(When you) take classes from all of these people who view (dance) differently who work differently, create differently and then you can bring that to your own power,” Annie Scott said. “(This allows you to) figure out how you want to work and how want to create and how you want to move that’s really nice.”
Faculty from different universities will also give presentations and workshops as well as get feedback from their peers for promotion and tenure decisions at their institution.
“It’s a good way to show their intellectual property and their professional research on a broader scale,” Holland said.
Dancers attending the conference will also get the opportunity to showcase their work through three adjudicated concerts over the course of the weekend, as well as a gala performance.
The adjudicated concerts provide the opportunity for critique from three nationally known dance experts. During the conference, three nationally known dance experts will judge the performances blindly, only having the title of the piece, the year it premiered and the music in the piece. The judges won’t know if the work being presented is an undergraduate work, a graduate students work, quest artist’s work or faculty work.
OU will have two pieces in the conference, a faculty work and an undergraduate student work. The faculty work is Travis Gatling’s, associate director of the Division of Dance, new piece Face to Face.
Holland said students can see differences in level of technique and chorographical abilities from other schools.
“There’s also the aspect of watching and gaining exposure to seeing what is being produced at other colleges,” said Madeleine Scott, director of the School of Dance, Film and Theater.
She is not related to Annie Scott.
Annie Scott said this conference helps students like herself, see where they fit in the dance world by taking classes from different people with different styles and views in dance.
“We’re really shown how good of a compositional program we have and how good our dancers are as well,” Annie Scott said.
