Ivies Collaborate to Explore Dancing Issues

Harvardians and Yalies may have faced off two weeks ago at the Game, but this weekend they’ll be sharing the stage in the Ivy Dance Exchange. The two-day extravagnza of performance and discussion at the Harvard Dance Center will feature dancing talent and choreographic originality and bring together artists from three Ivy League schools.

Riding on the coattails of a similar collaboration between Harvard, Princeton, and Barnard at New York City’s Merce Cunningham Studio last March, Ivy Dance Exchange will showcase representative works from Harvard, Brown and Yale’s dance programs. Merritt A. Moore ’11 and Kevin Shee ’11 from the Harvard Dance Program will perform a set of pieces by acclaimed choreographer Trey McIntyre. Harvard dancers will also perform two pieces—choreographed by Ricky D. Kuperman ’11 and Nina K. Stoller-Lindsay ’10—that were recently featured in “Momentum,” Harvard Ballet Company’s dance showcase at the Loeb Mainstage this past November.

Dancers from Brown will present original student choreography as well as pieces from Robert Battle’s “Rush Hour.” Yale’s performance will feature an original, contemporary West African piece by Lacina Coulibaly. “I’m as interested as anybody to find out about their programs and to see them dancing,” says Elizabeth Bergmann, the Dance Center director who helped to organize the event and will take part in a panel discussion.

This panel discussion, slotted for tomorrow and led by Folklore and Mythology Senior Lecturer Debra Foster, will explore the common challenges that face dance programs in the Ivy League.

The Dance Program at Brown, for example, struggles with providing a balanced dance education and maintaining sufficient staff size for both its curricular and extracurricular branches.

Julie Standberg, the Founding Director of Dance at Brown, says that the biggest challenge is leading students to the understanding that there is a balance between contemporary and classic influences that should be maintained in dance.

“[Brown] is trying to provide a range of experiences for the students over the four years,” Strandberg says. She notes, however, that this is becoming increasingly difficult as more students arrive on campus wanting to continue in a vein of dance they have already began to master.

The Yale Dance Studies Curriculum is facing a similar problem. “One of our big challenges is space,” says Emily Coates, a lecturer in Theater Studies and Artistic Director of the World Performance Project at Yale. “The interest in dance is blossoming as students realize the possibilities within their extra-curricular programs and the curriculum... bringing an increased demand for studio performance space and rehearsal space.”

In the past two years, the University renovated three floors of a building—now called the Broadway Loft Studios—for courses and extra-curricular groups to gather, but the space is not enough to keep up with the demand for dance space on campus.

While the Harvard Dance Program no longer has an issue of space, it does face an issue that Yale rectified with the creation of its dance studies curriculum, now in its fourth year.

“We’re still just a program. We have a curricular program but we’re not a department,” says Kristin Aune, assistant dance director at the Harvard Dance Program. “Even if our students dedicate half of their lives to dancing, it’s still in this extra-curricular category.” Aune went on to point out that there are many Universities around the country that have successfully incorporated dance into the academic field of study and produced positive results.

Over the past several years, Harvard has begun to offer a few dance-related courses for college credit and has introduced a secondary field of study in dramatic arts, but there is still no major dance presence in the curriculum. The leadership of the Harvard Dance Program continues to express a desire to see more dance classes offered for credit in the coming years.

Students in the Harvard Dance Program had their own take on the program’s situation. “I think it’s hard because most people coming to Harvard have chosen Harvard because they want to do other things beside dance. There’s a reason we chose Harvard over a conservatory,” Stoller-Lindsey says. “The more they incorporate into the curriculum, the more we’ll be able to fit dance into our schedules.”

Kuperman, her fellow student choreographer, expressed a similar sentiment: “I think that certain dancers here are at a comparable level to those dancing at a conservatory, so it’s impressive to see that commitment to their arts.” Kuperman notes that this commitment is especially remarkable in light of students’ need to handle a heavy academic workload in addition to their extracurricular involvement in dance.

Despite the challenges facing dance programs in esteemed academic institutions, these Ivies have been attracting more dancers in the past several years than ever before. With its potential for collaboration and sharing of ideas, the Ivy Dance Exchange hopes to further promote this growth.