Welcome to the Dance Program at
UMass Amherst!

We believe that we are a unique and powerful program in the country.

We believe in a strong cross-understanding of dance forms, and so emphasize jazz dance, African dance, and other world forms, in our curriculum, alongside intense training in modern dance and ballet.

We believe that understanding our histories makes us more powerful dancers, and more powerful communicators.

We believe in the beauty of different kinds of people, different kinds of body types, and multiple kinds of intelligences.

We believe in the transformative nature of performance, and the power that dance has to produce positive change in this world.

We believe that creating a strong community within the program leads to more learning than one in which we are competing against one another.

We believe in the cross-fertilization of the arts, sciences, and humanities, and constantly seek to build our relationships with other departments and programs, on and off campus.

We believe that dancers are among the most intelligent people on the planet, with required skills in many areas, from physiology to physics, from art to anthropology.

We believe that dancers are among the most complex athletes on the planet, requiring the skills found in many strength, stretch, balance, coordination, memory, team, contact, aim, timing, endurance, and precision sports.

We believe we have something to offer the planet.

And, we believe that the UMass Dance Program can help our students pave the way towards a healthy, balanced life, in whatever field (performing, therapy, teaching, technology) that they happen to follow.

Karyn Edison

2010-2011 was an exciting year of whirlwind activity! We were very busy last summer with the first annual Massachusetts Dance Festival, which brought together ten professional dance companies from Massachusetts onto the Fine Arts Center stage. Many of the companies featured dancers, choreographers, and directors who are alums of UMass Dance; the festival itself was the result of efforts by two alums, Karyn Edison and Yolanda Greaves, who saw the need for stronger support of dance in Massachusetts. The festival, which also took place at Boston Ballet in Boston, also featured many younger and emerging companies, and many classes by the terrific teachers in our state, such as Adrienne Hawkins, Jeanette Neale, and Marilyn Sylla.

This fall, there is an exhibit (University Museum of Contemporary Art, Sept. 9 - Oct. 16) of the powerful and timeless photographs of Barbara Morgan, whose images of the likes of Pearl Primus and many famous dancers of the 20th century (such as Martha Graham, et al) have become iconic parts of our national psyche. Peggy Schwartz, former head of our Dance Program, has completed her and her husband Murray's biography of Dr. Primus, The Dance Claimed Me. (Facebook link) (Read the interview with Peggy & Murray on Yale Press' blog) Three solos by Primus, reconstructed with the help of Kim Bears of Philadanco, were seen on our University Dancers concert last December, in Bowker Auditorium. They are a powerful testament to our humanity. The Primus works were performed with live music.

Pearl Primus, from the Barbara Morgan Photo Collection

Also on the UD program last year, was Doris Humphrey's Passacaglia and Fugue, with 18 dancers on an enormous set of boxes. This powerful piece was reconstructed, partly through Labanotation, by our own Humphrey-Limón specialist, Paul Dennis, and Jennifer Scanlon, a former Limón dancer (Limón technique is a development of the ideas of Doris Humphrey; she was advisor to the Limón company during the last years of her life).

Scene from Like That! at Pops Gala, May 2010

I've reconstructed my Like That!, a jazz piece with a cartoon background that I've created, with live music by Thom Hannum and the MASS Marimba Band. It's a fun piece that we premiered at the May Pops concert, and it was seen again in a number of venues in the fall: the Multi-Bands showcase in the Fine Arts Center, and the Alumni Association event, besides our UD concert.

We have so many opportunities for performing around here - I dare say more than most any college in the country, when we configure the possibilities and performance dates for the Five Colleges. Phew!

We had master classes in the fall from the Lar Lubovitch Company, Amy Marshall and Dancers, and Yasuko Yokoshi. That's besides the master classes on other campuses. We just got word that Meredith Monk has confirmed a date to appear in a talk at Mount Holyoke College, for instance. It's very exciting.

We look forward to seeing you at one of our events, whether a performance or a lecture or an alum gathering. Dance is about community - it works best when there is an audience to watch and give feedback, or support in any way. We survive because YOU are part of who we are. Let us continue to build on ways of making dance, and dancers, strong in our beautiful commonwealth. And may you find some kind of dance today, as you go about your day!

With joy in dance,
Billbob Brown
Director of the Dance Program

Return to top of page