The dance program is gearing up for our student production of Fall Dance Festival this November. This student-choreographed, student-performed production is always a hot ticket item, selling out traditionally every year. There are a few changes to this year's production. This year, Fall Dance Festival will take place in The CH Foundation The Legacy of Christine DeVitt Black Box Theatre (instead of the Creative Movement Studio). This year's production will also feature work by B.A. and B.F.A. dance majors. Our first official B.F.A. Dance cohort, graduating this spring, will create a group choreographic work, as well as perform a self-choreographed solo. We will also feature a duet performed by two senior B.A. dance majors. We also feature design and technology undergraduate and graduate students working behind the scenes to bring the production to life with costumes, lighting, and stage management. I am always intrigued by what our students create and perform in this production, and I am excited for audiences to experience it.

Also exciting in the near future is our National Association of Schools of Dance (NASD) accreditation visit, which coincides with our Fall Dance Festival's final dress rehearsal. We thought FDF would be a great opportunity for our accreditors to see our students in action, creatively and performatively speaking, both in class and onstage. The Fall Dance Festival is a great snapshot of the wealth of talent our program holds, and we are excited for our accreditors to see how we are meeting national standards with student work in class and in this production.

As I mentioned in the last newsletter, writing our self-study and preparing for our accreditation site visit has been a fruitful experience for me to reflect upon our program's growth over the last decade. It has given me time to contemplate on how we serve students, and has allowed me, in consultation with our faculty, to think about how we want to see the program progress forward. Evaluating our program's purpose has been of great benefit to me as I continue to lead this program. Offering three dance degree tracks in collaboration with our musical theatre program in the School of Theatre & Dance has been quite a shift for us all. But the dance faculty are having productive conversations about how to sustain these programs while best serving our students. We look forward to implementing new curricular ideas and offerings in the coming future. And in the meantime, we look forward to Fall Dance Festival and our NASD site visit.

Tickets are selling out fast for our production of Fall Dance Festival, so please get your tickets before they are gone! Tickets are available at online or by calling the box office at (806) 742-3603. Performances are Wednesday, November 15th through Saturday, November 18th at 7:30pm, with a student preview performance on Tuesday, November 14th.