As we approach the middle of October, the fall semester is in full swing, and the dance program is not slowing down. We welcomed a new cohort of MA dance graduate students this summer and new undergraduate dance students this fall. We have been off to a busy start of the academic year with auditions and rehearsals for Fall Dance Festival and DanceTech: Rites of Spring. We also recently took four students and two faculty members to the Texas Dance Improv Festival (TDIF), hosted at Sam Houston State University – a first for our program.
We’ve also already hosted a few guest teachers in the studio with our students: Hannah Haeussler, a 2019 TTU BA Dance alum who is teaching and working professionally in the DFW-area; Robert Kelley, a Florida-based dance artist who focuses on improvisation as a performative and compositional tool to analyze the cognitive approaches towards two movement generation processes: Explicitly cognitive (Choreographed) and Implicitly cognitive (Improvised); and KK Harris, a LA-based dance artist who has performed on hit shows and competitions such as NBC’s World of Dance and HBO’s Lovecraft Country.
Assistant Professor of Practice Melissa Brading recently traveled to Mexico City as an ambassador for Texas Tech University:
In early September, I was fortunate to travel to Mexico City to teach at Centro Nacional de las Artes (CENART) as a part of an exchange with Texas Tech. I worked with the choreography students in the morning and contemporary students in the afternoon for 3 days. The choreography workshop consisted of creating outside on their beautiful campus, working in duos and groups, and storytelling. There was sharing of work each day, and the commitment and focus of the choreographers was inspiring. In the contemporary workshop, we began each session with a 2-hour Countertechnique class followed by an hour of learning small sections of my choreography.
The dancers were energetic and hardworking, and it was impressive to see how well
they absorbed the information despite the language barrier. The community at CENART
was so wonderful and welcoming- they even surprised me with a birthday celebration
with cake and coffee! Overall, it was a successful and inspiring trip, and I hope
to engage with these wonderful students again in the future. A big thanks to Dean
Camacho for inviting me to participate and making this collaboration happen!
We are proud of Professor Brading for beautifully representing our Dance Program in Mexico City. The students loved learning from her during her short residency. We hope to collaborate more with Centro Nacional de las Artes in the future. We thank Dean Martin Camacho for helping make this exchange happen, and we look forward to continuing our relationship with the program in Mexico City.