Faculty Research

Dr. Rosemary Candelario received the 2018 Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research for her book Flowers Cracking Concrete: Eiko & Koma's Asian/American Choreographies (Wesleyan University Press 2016). In 2019 she co-edited with Bruce Baird the field-defining Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance. A new solo, aqueous, premiered at the Kyoto International Butoh Festival in 2019. She was scheduled to perform at the 2020 Boston Butoh Festival (canceled due to COVID-19). Rosemary was awarded a Faculty Development Leave for fall 2020. Her current research includes a book project that examines performances about abortion by artists and activists in the United States, and an ongoing multicase study of outdoor and nature-related butoh training and performance projects called Dancing Ecology.

Jordan Fuchs has been appointed as a Fulbright Specialist until 2018. His choreography for video screen has been presented in Istanbul, Turkey and São Paulo, Brazil, while his choreography for stage has recently been presented by the Performance Mix Festival in New York City and in Western Australia.

Sarah Gamblin participated in the creative project The Making Room with Bebe Miller Company and Susan Rethorst involving five creative residencies in the U.S. Gamblin performed in the five-city national tour of Miller’s subsequent evening-length work In a Rhythm, culminating in the Arts Diplomacy Residency tour sponsored by DanceMotion/USA and the U.S. Department of State, teaching and performing in six cities in Columbia and Peru. Gamblin is the coordinator of the Texas Dance Improvisation Festival attracting 300 participants in 2019 – the largest festival dedicated exclusively to dance improvisation in the United States.

Reviews:

April 8, 2018 “While she was speaking, the dancers—Michelle Boulé, Christal Brown, Sarah Gamblin, Angie Hauser, Bronwen MacArthur, and Trébien Pollard—began to articulate luscious strands of choreography. Equally magnificent sweeping across the stage as they were standing still, it was clear that this was a group of experts; their years of experience having chiseled movement down to its barest essentials, leaving only the beautiful accuracy of physical truths.” Joanna Furnans, See Chicago Dance.

March 19, 2018 “The way the performers do the movement is remarkable. Though clearly choreographed, they move as if discovering these gestures for the first time, as if each decision were of the moment rather than rote memory…The choreography turns from suspended float to jarring hop to lilting crawl, each moment imbued with detail, accented by a quick shake of the foot or a subtle change in focus. Gamblin’s wild spontaneous energy contrasts with Bronwen MacArthur’s easy malleability and Pollard’s loping, soaring calm. Angie Hauser’s open playfulness differs from Michelle Boulé’s private intensity.” Kaitlin McCarthy, City Arts Magazine.

February 23, 2018 “But it’s the members of Miller’s ensemble who demonstrate the geographic spread of terrific dance intelligences; her dancers (Michelle Boulé, Christal Brown, Sarah Gamblin, Angie Hauser, Bronwen MacArthur, Trebien Pollard) live, teach, choreograph, and perform all over the U.S. and abroad." Elizabeth Zimmer, The Village Voice.

Dr. Ilana Morgan has been adjudicated to present at the National Dance Education Organization Conference in Tempe, AZ and at the Aesthetics, Ethics, and Biopolitics of the Posthuman Conference at the Aarhus University, in Denmark.

Mary Williford-Shade has two current projects. The first one is a performance project called "WERK" which is being directed and choreographed by New York choreographer, Jeanine Durning. She is *"an Alpert Award winning choreographer and performer from New York whose work has been described by The New Yorker as having both “the potential for philosophical revelation and theatrical disaster.”* In this project, Jeanine has provided her creative improvisational practices as a strategy for making a dance.

We have been working for the last two of COVID years via ZOOM and had our first rehearsal FTF in New York in early January 2022. "Durning is interested in choreography as a ways and means to mobilize questions about how our basic need for connection, and how communication aligns, and often misaligns, with how our thinking and feeling come to form and action. She has an ongoing practice, *nonstopping*, which has yielded several performance works, including her solo *inging* (based on nonstop speaking)."

Her second project is the completion of a certification to become a Moving for Life Teacher. MFL is a non-profit wellness organization promoting holistic fitness, self-awareness, & fun through community dancing for those in cancer recovery & more. The Moving for Life's philosophy and practices are based on the work of Martha Eddy, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Irmgard Bartenieff.

Williford-Shade has performed with SOLA Dance: Women Dancing Women in 5 nationally adjudicated performances in 2019 and was previewed by Nancy Wolzny in the Houston magazine, Arts & Culture, as one of the “Top Ten + Winter Dance Events in the State of Texas”.  Her work was produced internationally by The Dance Café in Uppsala, Sweden.