Dance students have contact with working professionals both on and off campus. The department regularly engages guest artists to work with students to create pieces, conduct workshops and produce performances.

Guest Artists for 2011-12

West African Dance Residency with Andrea Markus
October 31-November 13, 2011

Andrea Markus will spend two weeks with our students teaching classes, speaking with the community, visiting area schools and choreographing a dance for our students to perform in Chelonia 2012.  Andrea Markus was born in Jamaica, West Indies. She received her masters degree in Dance and Dance Education from New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Ms. Markus is currently a teacher of African-based modern dance in the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions. In addition, she is the principal dancer and co-director of Magbana Drum & Dance NYC, a West African-based performance group of percussionists and dancers. Ms. Markus has performed with the Alpha Omega 1-7 Theatrical Dance Company, based in New York City, performing dance works by George Faison, Eleo Pomare, Marshall Romaine, Andy Torres, Leni Wylliams, Gary DeLoatch, and others. She has also traveled to Guinea, West Africa to study dance and drumming with the masters of the national companies Les Ballets Africains and Ballet Djoliba. Ms. Markus has taught West African dance to students in grades K-12 as a master teacher for CREATE! Arts in Education Program, Young Audiences of New York, and for the outreach program of Magbana Drum & Dance NYC. Professor Markus received her B.A. from Ithaca College and her M.A. from New York University.

Modern Dance Residency with Kate Corby’99
Dates TBA

Kate Corby will spend one week with our students teaching classes and choreographin a new work for our students to perform. Kate is a contemporary choreographer, performer and educator. Her dance theater works have been performed extensively in Chicago, as well as in New York, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and internationally in Canada, Mexico, Taiwan and Hungary, where she carried out choreographic research as a Fulbright fellow. Corby is currently an assistant professor of dance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she teaches composition, improvisation, contemporary technique and somatics. She re-established Kate Corby & Dancers with Chicago-based dancers Erin Kilmurray, Emily Miller and Anna Normann in 2009. The company was San Francisco-based from 2001-04, performing at the Cowell Theater, ODC Theater, Dance Mission and Venue 9, among other venues. From 2007-09 Corby directed the LIVE ANIMALS Performance Collective in Chicago, showing work at Ruth Page Center for the Arts, Links Hall, Hamlin Park Fieldhouse and Around the Coyote Gallery. Corby received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007, where she was also an instructor. In addition to teaching master classes nationally and internationally, Corby has served on the faculties of Beloit College, the Pedagogy Department of the Hungarian Dance Academy and the Dance Center of Columbia College.

Guest Artists for 2010-11

Natya Dance Theatre
In residence September 29-30, 2010
Workshops on September 29-30, 2010
Performance September 30, 2010 at the Hendricks Center for the Arts

Natya Dance Theatre (NDT), under the artistic leadership of a Hema Rajagopalan, is amongst the most critically acclaimed and culturally treasured Indian dance companies in the United States. Founded in 1975 and based in Chicago, IL, the highly innovative work of NDT offers profound and subtle expressions of humanity’s deepest questions and values in the context of our present-day lives. Rooted in Bharata Natyam, one of the great classical dance forms of India, NDT preserves and perpetuates Bharata Natyam in all its classical rigor, and moves the art form in innovative directions to foster cultural exchange through dance. NDT’s contemporary interpretations incorporate dynamic body movement, rhythmic footwork, hand gestures and facial expressions to convey meaning and emotion that create rasa, the aesthetic experience that transforms the audience.

At the core of its mission, NDT believes that dance is a powerful means of cultural exchange. This is accomplished by multi-faceted programming, including a professional touring company that performs throughout the country and internationally, a 32-year-old dance school, an outreach program, and a series of presentations featuring the finest Indian performing artists of various genres.

Hailed by The New York Times as, “Admirably precise… animated… sensual… exceptional… triumphant… daring,” audiences and critics worldwide have recognized the artistic excellence of the NDT Company. Recent celebrated performance highlights include: in 2008, the Company performed with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble before an audience of 13,000 in Chicago’s Millennium Park; in 2005, NDT was the first US company ever to appear at the prestigious World Music Institute in New York City; and In 2002, NDT was the only dance company selected to create an original work for performance at the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. NDT is a six-time recipient of the Chicago Reader “Critic’s Choice.” In 2003, NDT was the first Indian dance company to receive the prestigious Chicago Dance Award, and is a 2004 recipient of the Paul Berger Arts Entrepreneurship Award from Columbia College Chicago. NDT was featured in 2005 in The Chicago Dance Project, a 13-part series produced by PBS, and in 2006 in Arts Across Illinois CenterStage on WTTW Channel 11.

NDT has been presented at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, McAninch Arts Center at College of DuPage and nationally and internationally at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Ravinia Festival, the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, the Avignon Festival in France, and the Music and Dance Festival in Madras, India, among other major venues.

Collaborations have included works with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lookingglass Theater, and the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.

Like You Mean It 
Workshops in Improvisational Performance
October 7, 2010

Like You Mean It 
is
Noelle Chun
Adriana Durant
Annie Kloppenberg

The Columbus, OH-based improvisational trio of dance artists performs and teaches workshops nationally. Audiences have heralded Like You Mean It’s simultaneous wit, humanity, oddity, and physical virtuosity.  The dancers first began working together regularly as graduate students at The Ohio State University and found their individual and collective ideas about improvisational performances yielded a dynamic, distinctive approach to group improvisational performance and teaching. 

Past & upcoming performances and teaching engagements include The Ohio State University, CM2, Agora Arts Festival, Sneak Reviews at Cleveland Public Theater Parish Hall, Ohio University, University of Akron, Oberlin College: (OH); Green Street Studios (MA), University of Wisconsin; Zenon Company Studios (MN), Southern Theater for Minnesota Fringe Festival, Epiphany Dance Experiment (Chicago), University of Michigan, Michigan Dance Project (MI), Triskelion Arts (NYC), Taffety Punk Theater (Washington DC).  Visitwww.lymitrio.com for more info.

Arturo German Hernandez de la Mesa
Residency in Capoeira, Salsa, African and more!
Oct. 24-Nov. 6, 2010

Margi Cole and The Dance COLEctive
February 21-26, 2011

 The Dance COLEctive (TDC) is a modern dance company that aspires to challenge assumptions about how dance is presented, through the use of cutting-edge choreography, innovative collaborations, and inspired creative site-specific-works. Now in its 15th year, TDC conducts an annual season which includes residencies with universities, high schools and other dance organizations in two geographic regions of the USA; multiple master classes, workshops and lecture demonstrations in the greater Chicago area; an annual week-long summer intensive of classes; an annual concert and residency in Chicago proper; performances in traditional venues and site-specific choreography.  Artistic Director Margi Cole has been recognized with many choreographic awards.  TDC uses modern dance as a vehicle to introduce, challenge and engage its audience in a number of topics.  Through carefully designed residency activities the viewer has gained the knowledge and the desire to interpret our work in a meaningful way.

While at Beloit TDC will conduct a series of residency activities both at the college and in the community.  Many of those activities will be geared around the companies work Written on the Body.  A work for six dancers which uses the lives of the
Brontë sisters as a point of departure in its exploration of gender roles and stereotypes.  The hidden identities of authors, as well as the hardships they endured throughout their lives in Victorian England, provide the framework.  Cole interprets the Brontës' masculine and feminine personae, using movement images of power, strength, vulnerability and intimacy.  Music for the piece is by Kevin O'Donnell, costumes are by Atalee Judy and videoscape is by Michael Cole.

The Space/Movement Project
Residency and Workshop
April 7, 2011

About the Company
The Space/Movement Project is a Chicago-based modern dance collective. The group operates without a single artistic leader but several members sharing creative responsibilities and resources. Committed to artistic partnership, the group continuously explores ways to further their collaborative process. Since 2005, TS/MP has produced concerts at such notable Chicago venues as Links Hall, the Prop Thtr, Hamlin Fieldhouse, The Galaxie, and Roosevelt University's Ganz Hall and performed regionally in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio. Visit TS/MP at thespacemovementproject.org.

About the Workshop
This group composition workshop will introduce students to the unique methodology TS/MP has developed in their own collaborative practice. Company members will introduce participants to the various tools for developing new work as a group using existing material and original work. Following the workshop, the company will present a short performance of company work.

PAST GUEST ARTISTS
Some of our past guests include: Heidi Latsky, Gabriel Masson, Joel Hall, Kirby Reed, Natasha Shirokova of Moscow's Modern Dance Theater, B. J. Sullivan, Linda Lehovec, Erica Wilson-Perkins, BlackEarth Collaborative Arts, Jin Wen Yu, Paula Frasz, Catherine Cabeen of Bill T. Jones Dance Company, Aiko Kinoshita, director of Seattle's AcornDance, Chris Walker, Bellydancers Seana Dishun and Christina King, and Margi Cole, Artistic Director and founder of The Dance COLEctive.