Upcoming Events
Welcome Dancers
We are so happy to have you back!
Dancers, check out the Auditions Information page for the latest on Ballet Placement and Fall Faculty Dance Project auditions. Info is rolling out daily so keep an eye on it.
Friday, September 5, 7:00pm, Kirby Theater, Amherst College
Five College Dance Orientation Concert and Social
Head on over to Kirby Theater, Amherst College, for the Five College Dance Orientation Concert. See faculty works and meet the dance faculty and your dancing peers over pizza afterward. See you there!
Free dance and pizza for Five College students.
Auditions in September!
Five College Dance Auditions
Sep 5 Ballet Placement
Sep 6 Faculty Concert Auditions
Sep 10 Smith MFA and Grad Event Auditions
Sep 14 MHC Senior Capstone Auditions
Friday, Sep 19, 4:30pm, Neilson Browsing Room, Smith College
Reworking Contemporary Italian Dance: Repertoire Transmission and Reconstruction from the Eighties to Today”
Lecture with Prof. Elena Cervellati (University of Bologna)
Free and open to the public.
Today, Italian contemporary dance is searching for itself through choreographic processes of transmission and reconstruction of its recent past, striving to keep alive the actuality of dance works from the last four decades that are projected onto the present in an effort to make them part of it. Choreographic investigations into reconstruction, restaging and reenactment have flourished on the international dance scene and consolidated in Italy through numerous projects. This talk will examine two case studies. The first is the extensive project RIC.CI: Reconstruction, Italian Contemporary Dance (1980s-90s), ongoing since 2011 as a collaboration between dance critic and scholar Marinella Guatterini and a wide network of Italian theaters and festivals. The second concerns the solo Tu non mi perderai mai (You Will Never Lose Me), choreographed and performed in 2005 by Raffaella Giordano, one of the protagonists of the Italian contemporary dance world, and recently transmitted to Stefania Tansini, a dancer from a younger generation. These experiments in repertoire transmission stand for memory processes that ultimately aim to define artistic and human identities that are individual and personal, but also generational and cultural. They result in performance experiences that are inevitably different from the original ones, while trying to also remain the same.
Announcements
Progressions, Fundamentals of Dunham Technique
Progressions is an exposition of the fundamentals of Dunham Technique. Katherine Dunham composed the structure of "Progressions" during her time building the Performing Arts Training Center in East St. Louis, IL. Progressions highlight the energy and power of the technique.
In this project rehearsing at UMass Amherst, dancers will work with Saroya Corbett, a certified teacher in Dunham Technique and chair of History and Theory for the Institute for Dunham Technique Certification (IDTC). Dancers and drummers will also work with master percussionist James Belk, who specializes in the Dunham Technique Rhythms. Duane Lee Holland, Jr. will be the rehearsal director.
More about Saroya Corbett:
Saroya Corbett is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Africana Studies at Williams College. Her research explores Black social dance genres as a foundation to construct histories of the everyday lived experiences of Black people. Her recent dissertation specifically focuses on dance team culture in southern Louisiana and at historically Black colleges and universities.
She is a certified teacher in Dunham Technique and the chair of History and Theory for the Institute for Dunham Technique Certification (IDTC). In 2014, her chapter “Katherine Dunham’s Mark on Jazz” was published in Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches, which focuses on Katherine Dunham’s contribution to the evolution of jazz dance. Saroya has performed in several dance companies including the Katherine Dunham Museum Workshop, the Spelman College Dance Theatre, Kariamu & Company, and Flyground.
Saroya received her Ph.D. from UCLA in Cultures and Performance, her MFA degree in Dance from Temple University and her BA from Spelman College in economics. She is on the steering committee for the Coalition for Diasporan Scholars Moving (CDSM), a shadow organization supporting and providing resources to Black dance artists, scholars, and professionals navigating microaggressions and racism.
Five College Dance featured in Dance Magazine
Five College Dance was featured in Dance Magazine this fall in an article by Stav Ziv. The piece includes information about the FCD program, this year's guest artist repertory project, an excerpt of Lucinda Childs's Dance, and interviews with faculty and students. Download a PDF of the article to read below.
Dance Magazine's 25 to Watch List
Julia Antinozzi '18
Congratulations to Julia for making Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch List." See our Five College Dance Spotlight on Julia here. From the article:
"Antinozzi graduated from Smith College in 2018 with a dance degree and an astronomy minor, and has been choreographing for her own dancers since 2022...Taken altogether, her works [The Suite and Third Variation both from 2024] illustrate a probing of her fascination with classical ballet filtered through a contemporary—and uniquely Antinozzi—lens, daring viewers to take a closer look."