Melanie Bales
In the past two years, Melanie Bales has co-edited the volume Dance On Its Own Terms (Oxford University Press) in 2013, created a new work for Drums Downtown, and presented a lecture at Emory University and a series of conference panels.
Harmony Bench
Harmony Bench remains active with the Ohio State Humanities Institute performance/politics working group, and on the CORD (Congress on Research in Dance) board. She has produced several articles, and her book Dance as Common: Movement as Belonging in Digital Cultures is nearing completion. She also has received a Research and Creative Activity Grant for her next project, Mapping Touring: Itineraries in Motion.
Rodney A. Brown
Rodney A. Brown is participating in the White House Initiative Conference on African Americans in Atlanta, presenting at the University of Michigan’s Community Engaged Learning Symposium and a fellowship and funding from its Center for World Performance Studies, new commissions and presentation of creative research with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC), SMAG, DCDC2, and Moving Collective, teaching and presenting at the Kentucky Governors’ School, and securing Diversity and Inclusion funding at The Ohio State University.
Michael Kelly Bruce
In 2013-14, Michael Kelly Bruce taught two semesters of Kinesiology, one of composition and one of Floor Barre. He also returned to chairing the Undergraduate Studies Committee, a responsibility he first undertook in 1992-98. In July, he attended the 100th birthday party for Perry-Mansfield in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where he first began dancing with Harriette Ann Gray in 1967. During May Term 2014 he traveled to Costa Rica to teach in the department’s study abroad program. Next year he will re-work “Pange Lingua” (1986) for Dance Downtown. Dance, geography, time…
Dave Covey
Since the last INFORM, Dave Covey has been a leader in the renovation of Sullivant Hall and is enjoying the department’s new spaces, especially the new Barnett Theatre. In spring 2012 he participated in a month-long tour of Africa with the Jazz Tap Ensemble, traveling to the DRC, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, sponsored by the Department of State and Dance Motion USA. Covey traveled to Dusseldorf, Germany to reconstruct his lighting design for Merce Cunningham’s Scenario, for the Ballet am Rhein.
Melanye White Dixon
Melanye White Dixon’s book Marion Cuyjet and Her Judimar School of Dance was published July 2011 by Mellen Press and her article on choreographer Talley Beatty is forthcoming in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. In autumn 2011, she launched the Department of Dance “Young People’s Concert” as an annual outreach and engagement initiative with funding from the Arts Initiative of the College of Arts and Sciences and Karen A. Bell fund. She has participated in various conferences around the country, and maintains service commitments to the Ohio State STEP Program, the faculty advisory committee of the Denman Undergraduate Research Forum and the Ohio Department of Education.
Karen Eliot
Karen Eliot served as co-editor of Dance on its Own Terms: Histories and Methodologies, published by Oxford University Press in 2013. In spring 2013 she was awarded a Research Enhancement Grant for research at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library during summer, which generated an article “On the World’s Stage: Nana Gollner, an American classical ballerina and the Rhetoric of Ballet Nationalism, 1930-1950,” forthcoming in Dance in American Culture (University Press of Florida). In April she presented a lecture on “Dance in la Belle Epoque” at the Columbus Museum of Art, focusing on the work of Loie Fuller. Her book, Albion’s Dance: the British Ballet during the Second World War is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Candace Feck
Candace Feck has invested in a large measure of administrative work in tandem with her teaching, serving as director of graduate studies and chairing the search for a new faculty scholar. Research projects included the development of a unit for the Accelerated Motion website (Wesleyan University Press), an essay, “Bebe Miller: World-Maker” featured in the gallery guide for the Tracing History exhibit, an entry for the Routledge Online Encyclopedia of Modernism, and publication of the chapter “What’s in a Dance?” in Dance On Its Own Terms. Feck piloted a new course in oral history methods, moderated a film project at Danspace, captured an interview with Karen Bell for the Ohio State Voices of Women archive, and spent a week in residence at SUNY Brockport, presenting an invited lecture on dance and democracy for the American Democracy Project.
Susan Hadley
Susan Hadley restaged Commonplace for RDT, Utah Valley University and Ohio State Dance, and also saw the work reconstructed by Bridget Roosa from Labanotation score at Agnes Scott College. She created new works Honor Guard for RDT and Wish You Were Here for alums Teena Custer and Erika Randall. She choreographed Origins for Drums Downtown X, and the final section of Drumming for an Ohio State Percussion concert attended by Steve Reich and honoring his music. Hadley also choreographed The Mystery of Edwin Drood for the Department of Theatre. She performed in James Kudelka’s Four Seasons with BalletMet, and in a developing opera work aMusement for the Andover Music Educators Conference. Hadley represented Ohio State at the HERS conference for women in higher education leadership and is currently a member of the Ohio State President and Provost’s Leadership Initiative.
Bebe Miller
Bebe Miller began her 2012-13 sabbatical project with the premiere of A History, Bebe Miller Company’s latest work, at the Wexner Center for the Arts. The evening-long duet for Angie Hauser (MFA 2000) and Darrell Jones, with dramaturgy by Talvin Wilks and video by Lily Skove (MFA 2010) toured nationally through 2013. Following their NYC premiere Miller was the featured honoree at New York Live Arts Spring BASH.
As part of her sabbatical project exploring directorial and ensemble practices she spent a week observing The Wooster Group’s process of experimental theater. She observed rehearsals and appeared in a work-in-progress showing, culminating in the premiere performances of Early Shaker Spirituals: A Record Album Interpretation, in May 2014 at The Performing Garage in New York City. Upcoming in Fall 2014 is a reconstruction of her work. Prey by Emory University and Agnes Scott College. The work, created in 2000 with Ohio State students, will be reconstructed from the Labanotation score, which was created by Valarie Williams.
Susan Van Pelt Petry
In 2014-2015, Susan Van Pelt Petry begins her ninth year as chair. This past year, with a grant from the college, she curated a repertory program and coached a small company of dance majors to tour to four cities in China over spring break. In autumn 2013, she was awarded the Ray Hanley Award by the Greater Columbus Arts Council for sustained leadership and achievement in the arts in Columbus. In December 2013 she collaborated with her husband and artist Ric Petry on a new work She continues to serve on the board of directors of the National Association of Schools of Dance (NASD) and on the Council of Dance Administrators (CODA), as well as serving on the advisory board of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP).
Mitchell Rose
Mitchell Rose has finished a new film Globe Trot that he made with Bebe Miller. Miller choreographed a dance and Mitchell developed a crowd-sourcing methodology in which he sent assignments to filmmakers around the world to shoot two seconds of the dance. These 54 filmmakers from all seven continents – including Antarctica – sent their footage back to Mitchell for editing. The film is now making its way through the festival circuit and has already won five awards. In March, Rose attended the world premiere at the prestigious Cinedans dance-film festival in Amsterdam where he also did a presentation on the 15-month process of making Globe Trot.
Valarie Williams
Valarie Williams, professor, continues to serve as associate dean and executive director of the Arts Initiative. She co-directed from Labanotation score Anna Sokolow’s Daydream from Rooms, Yvonne Rainer’s Chair/Pillow from Continuous Project Altered Daily for the 2014 department’s tour to China, and presented two lectures on “Performing the Possible: 20th century principles applied to 21st century artists” at the KRIGA International Symposium on the Global Trend in Gifted Education in Arts: “Changing Meaning and the Role of the Gifted in the Arts,” Korean National Research Institute for Gifted in Arts and Humanities, University of Seoul, Korea. She continues to oversee the university’s Urban Arts Space, Hopkins Hall Gallery, the Royal Shakespeare Company Partnership, and Town and Gown activities.
Norah Zuniga-Shaw
Norah Zuniga-Shaw launched her most recent project TWO, a collaboration with Maria Palazzi (scores.motionbank.org) at the Frankfurt Lab in 2013, focusing on the mind/body practices of Bebe Miller and Thomas Hauert/ZOO Company. Synchronous Objects, her collaboration with William Forsythe and ACCAD has been featured in the publications Moving without a Body and Flesh Text, and at festivals such as the Chicago Humanities Festival, Taipei Arts Festival, TEDx Columbus, and various symposia. With a recent commission, Shaw re-created Synchronous Objects as a three-part immersive video installation that premiered in Essen, Germany and toured extensively for two years as a Goethe Institute Excellence Project in Bangalore, Taipei, Amsterdam, Ankara, Budapest, Tokyo, New York, Munich, and Zagreb. 2014 marks the completion of Shaw’s long-awaited book and catalog for Synchronous Objects.
