A dance by dancer and choreographer Britta Peterson ’08, a graduate student in the Master of Fine Arts in Dance program at Arizona State University, was selected for the gala finale program at the 2012 American College Dance Festival Association’s Baja Regional Conference at California State University. The dance, Violet Flight: Pursuit of Significance, represented ASU at the conference held this past weekend, March 23 – 26, and includes Denise Stein ’11, who is also in the graduate program in dance at ASU, as a dancer.
Peterson, a very busy member of the Gustavus Dance Company while at Gustavus, credits her dance instructors at Gustavus with the fundamentals, experience, and support for her continued work in dance and choreography at Arizona State University. The opportunity to work in the student choreographers’ gallery and to work closely with guest choreographers and dancers and faculty members Michele Rusinko, Maria Gomez Tierney, Melissa Rolnick and Cynthia Gutierrez Garner provided the foundation on which she works today.
This conference was the first Baja Regional American Dance Festival Conference. It included a variety of master classes, opportunities for student and faculty exchanges in and out of the studio, adjudication and information concerts, feedback sessions and a Gala Concert. Additionally, special faculty seminars and workshops were planned. The “dynamic and highly respected adjudicators” for the conference were Jan Erkert, Christopher Watson, and Eva Encinias Sandoval. Although final numbers were not available at the time of this writing, the conference planners expected as many as 350 registrants and 33 adjudicated dances from all member institutions in the region.
The 2012 National College Dance Festival will be held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on May 25-27, 2012. The National Festival, a biennial event, showcases on the national level the outstanding quality of choreography and performance that is being created on college and university campuses. Dances are selected by the adjudicators from each of the regional conferences based on their outstanding artistic excellence and merit. Approximately 33 schools from around the country will be invited to perform in one of the three gala concerts.
The total number of dances adjudicated at each conference determines the number of dances selected from that conference. Adjudicators select dances for the National Festival after viewing the regional gala concert. The same anonymity policies apply to the National Festival selection as apply to the regional gala selection. Dances for the National Festival are selected from the gala concert program. Only one dance from a school may be selected for the National Festival, even if that school had two dances in the regional gala.
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