An interactive experience for all ages, Dixie State University’s “Dance in Concert: A Community Dance Experience” encourages audience members to watch, move and reflect about their own experiences around the themes of name, lineage and community.
A collaborative performance, “Dance in Concert” features 11 Dixie State students majoring or minoring in dance, three full-time faculty, and four guest artists, including New York City-based artist Sydnie L. Mosely and SLMDances dancers. The concert is set to take place at 7:30 p.m. each evening on April 14 and 15 in the Eccles Mainstage Theater on the DSU campus. Admission is free and the public is encouraged to attend.
“Working with the guest artists expanded our perception of community and we were able to explore how our dance program community fits within the soon-to-be Utah Tech campus community,” Ashly Richins, a senior dance major, said.
Creating art during the pandemic allowed dance students and faculty to explore new ways of presenting dance. Once restrictions lifted, they continued to re-envision the purpose of performance on campus. To this end, they facilitated a yearlong community engagement project with Mosely and SLMDances to explore the institutional name change from Dixie State to Utah Tech University. While faculty anticipated that the project would center around the institution’s past name, students found the new name a more compelling topic to investigate while asking the question, “How do I fit in?”
“Through the activities and research we’ve done leading up to this concert, we explored more about ourselves and the communities that we are a part,” Nena Jones, a freshman dance major, said. “This gave us the understanding that we have connections with others that we may not have realized before.”
“Dance in Concert: A Community Dance Experience” is part of the Dixie State Dance Program’s commitment to offering an active learning approach to subjects such as aerial, ballet, modern dance, composition, dance history and social dance. Offering a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science as well a minor and an Integrated Studies emphasis, the program provides students with a broad understanding of dance as an academic and professional discipline through technical, creative and contextual courses that complement and reinforce one another. Dance Program faculty actively engage with students in the classroom and provide mentorship in areas of professional interest. Learn more at dance.utahtech.edu.