Tag Archives: Dance

ShaKea Alston ’17 Receives Coveted Arts Internship

Congratulations to ShaKea Alston ’17, a special major in Peace and Conflict Studies and Dance for winning a coveted arts internship during which she will be working at the documentary company POV, which many of you may associate with PBS public television.

This story was initially posted by the News and Information Office.
By Ryan Dougherty
June 5th, 2015

In February, ShaKea Alston ’17 had a video interview for a coveted internship with theDiversity in Arts Leadership program in New York City. She thought it went well but stayed realistic about her chances to be one of the 12 students chosen from the 100 interviewed.

But two months later, while studying in McCabe Library, she got the call.

“I was pretty excited and a little surprised,” says Alston, a special major in peace and conflict studies and dance from Bronx, N.Y. “After applying for something so competitive, it’s validating to hear they felt strongly enough about my qualifications and potential to accept me.

“Needless to say,” she adds, “it was an awesome study break!”

The Arts & Business Council of New York, a non-profit division of Americans for the Arts, placed Alston and 11 other students at host arts organizations throughout New York City. The program was created to promote diversity in the field of arts management and stimulate creative partnerships between the arts and business communities in New York.

This week, Alston began interning with American Documentary | POV, a series that offers alternative viewpoints to mainstream media. She works in the development department, researching funding prospects and helping to coordinate the launch of the new season of POV, among other tasks.

“I’ll also be going on site visits to see where the other members of the cohort are interning and what they’re working on,” she says, “and participating in networking and cultural/arts events around NYC.”

Arts organizations serving as intern hosts represent an array of disciplines such as music, dance, theater, visual arts, museums, and arts services. The program matches students with business mentors who guide their personal and professional growth throughout the summer, and it connects students to an alumni network.

Looking back on her first two years at Swarthmore, Alston cites “The Arts as Social Change” course taught by Sharon Friedler, director of the College’s Dance Program, as pivotal. It offered her the chance to intern with Dance/USA Philadelphia and gave her experience with proposing and writing a grant with classmates, which helped her in her internship with the Innocence Project last summer.

“On a more theoretical level,” she says, “the course definitely changed how I thought about and engaged with art on a personal level, and allowed me to share these new ideas with my classmates.

“The course also helped me think about and form my special major, by thinking about the intersection between dance, identity, community engagement, peace, and a whole bunch of other things I haven’t quite articulated yet.”

While Alston will do everything possible to be in the moment this summer, learning all that she can from her mentor, peers, and program alumni, she’ll also have an eye to the future.

“I hope to see how my interest in the arts can continue even after I stop performing or practicing dance per se,” she says. “I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do after college, though I will say if someone in the future told me I was working in the development office of a major dance company, I’d be pretty happy and unsurprised to hear it.”

Radical Democracy and Humanism: Intersections between Performance and Action

It is our privilege to be a co-sponsor of events in the David Dorfman Performance Residency!

RADICAL DEMOCRACY AND HUMANISM: INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND ACTION

WITH DAVID DORFMAN DANCE AND OTHERS

Swarthmore College (Departments and Programs of Music and Dance, Black Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Theatre, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility) and the William J. Cooper Foundation present a three-week performance residency RADICAL DEMOCRACY AND HUMANISM: INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND ACTION. Conceived by Professor Sharon Friedler and led by Swarthmore graduate Kate Speer ‘08, the residency centers around engagements with David Dorfman Dance (DDD), a leading American modern dance company known for politically relevant works centered on community responsibility. From February 9 to February 27, 2015, workshops, classes and lectures will address a spectrum of positions and assumptions regarding intersecting issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, politics and the environment.

Participating facilitators include the following scholars and artists: Kate Speer ‘08, who has written and delivered papers on Dorfman’s dances, creative processes, and their connection to radical democracy, Teya Sepinuck, the founder and director of the Theater of Witness model of performance, David Kyuman Kim, a Connecticut College scholar of race, religion, and public life and George Lakey, visiting professor, non-violence advocate and civil rights activist. In the lectures and workshops, selections of David Dorfman’s repertory works will be taught as aids in broadening individual performing range and exposure to these processes will provide a common basis for the study and discussion of different aspects of performance. Discussions will delve into multiple opinions and perspectives in order to encourage participants to begin dialoguing about the questions at stake, effectively employing democratic practices within the concert stage environment. The residency will seek to explore how Dorfman creates dance that de-stigmatizes the notion of accessibility and interaction in post-modern performance and how dance can add a positive challenge to engage audiences in action.

The residency schedule of events free and open to the public at Swarthmore College will be as follows:

1st Week

February 9, 7-9PM, Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema
Presentation:“Theatre of Witness” with Teya Sepinuck

February 12, 4:30 – 6PM, Lang Performing Arts Center Troy Dance Lab (LPAC 2)
Movement Workshop: David Dorfman and the Active Citizen with Kate Speer

February 15, 1-5PM, Lang Performing Arts Center Boyer Studio (LPAC 3)
Workshop: “Theatre of Witness” with Teya Sepinuck

2nd Week

February 19, 4:30 – 6PM, Lang Performing Arts Center Troy Dance Lab (LPAC 2)Master Class in dance: David Dorfman and company

February 19, 7-9PM, Kohlberg 116
“Engaging Human Differences: Teaching Dialogue and Discourse about Race, Religion and Public Life”
Teach-in with David Kyuman Kim

February 20, 8PM, Lang Performing Arts Center, Pearson-Hall Theatre
DDD, PROPHETS OF FUNK

Final Week

February 24, 2:40-4PM, Lang Music 407
Lecture/Discussion: “Between Apathy and Action” with Kate Speer

February 26, 7-10:30PM, Keith Room, Lang Center for Social Responsibility
Workshop:“Get on Your Feet: Organizing for Peaceful Protest” with George Lakey

All events are free and open to the public without reservation. Seating may be limited for some events and is first come, first served.

The central performance event, David Dorfman’s PROPHETS OF FUNK, is on Friday, February 20 at 8PM is in the Lang Performing Arts Center’s Pearson-Hall Theater. DDD celebrates the band’s groundbreaking, visceral, and powerful visions of prophetic love that continue to shine on despite everyday struggles. PROPHETS OF FUNK lifts up the spirit of Sly: that in the face of the funk of life, there are still hopes and aspirations that reside in all of us. The production of PROPHETS OF FUNK was made possible by generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, The New England Foundation for the Arts, National Dance Project with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, The Jerome Robbins Foundation, and Friends of David Dorfman Dance. Choreographic material for PROPHETS OF FUNK was developed, in part, during residencies at the Tisch Dance Summer Residency Program at New York University and as company-in-residence at Connecticut College.

For further information about these events, contact Tara Webb at 610-328-8260 or lpacevents@swarthmore.edu. These events are free and open to the public without reservations, but space is limited for some of the smaller lectures and workshops. More details about the schedule of events available at: http://www.swarthmore.edu/dance-program and on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Swarthmore-College-Dance-Program/200840063275757

[Click on the link below to zoom in.]

The Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company in the Legacy Project on Fri, Jan 30

The William J. Cooper Foundation presents the Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company in The Legacy Project on Friday, January 30, 2009 at 8 pm in the Pearson-Hall Theater, Lang Performing Arts Center, Swarthmore College. “With inventive choreography, original music compositions, and evocative metaphors, the Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, offers [the] audience the dance equivalent of a cherished book of family photographs” (The New York Times). Based in Union, New Jersey, Carolyn Dorfman and the CDDC have spent the past 26 years redefining the scope of dance as a method of storytelling and community building. In particular, CDDC’s Legacy Project inspires and rouses its audience as it explores themes of family, struggle, and survival in light of the Jewish diaspora.

Described by critics as “ingenious” (The Star-Ledger) and ??emotionally resonant?? (The New York Times), the dances in the Legacy Project bring together Dorfman’s family stories, Jewish history, and a universal struggle for identity. Through this combination, Dorfman inspires in her audience feelings of familiarity and unity, creating dances that serve as metaphors for the greater truths of the human experience. “In her works, visual images become still photographs that capture and freeze certain universal truths…both reflect[ing] and engender[ing] a profound humanity. Because her dances are about people and life experience, often moving from the autobiographical to the universal, they hold immediate appeal” (The New York Times).

The Company’s Legacy Project spans the arrival of Jews in America from Brazil in 1654 (“Odisea”) through to the Holocaust (“Cat’s Cradle,” “The Klezmer Sketch”) and finally to American assimilation and contemporary struggles (“The American Dream”). Additionally, “Echad” explores personal and group dynamics within the context of religion, setting up a metaphor of struggle and togetherness that can be extended to all relations in the global community. “For many of the dances, the stories are about Dorfman’s family…Holocaust survivors and immigrants, but the magic is that this is also a work about all of us” (Asbury Park Press).

Known as a creator of provocative dances that reflect her concerns about the human condition, Dorfman is interested in creating “worlds” into which the audience can enter. Since founding her Company in 1982, she has created more than 50 works for CDDC and achieved a highly respected position among artists and arts institutions regionally, nationally and internationally. A Michigan native, she received her BFA in Dance from the University of Michigan and her MFA from New York University Tisch School for the Arts. She has been designated a Distinguished Artist and granted five Choreography Fellowships, including a 2004 Fellowship, by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts (NJSCA), in addition to other choreography honors. Dorfman was the first artist to receive the prestigious, and nationally selected, Prudential Prize for Non-Profit Leadership in 1994. In 2004 she received the Jewish Women in the Arts Award for Dance from the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit and the Janice Charach Epstein Gallery.

The Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company in the Legacy Project on Fri, Jan 30