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When asked “If you were ‘Dean for a Day,’ what would you change about the College?,” College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA) students sounded a common theme with their responses:
“Create a collaborative experience. Artists creating art from or for their art—maybe music students creating the score for a play or for dance.”
“Find ways to connect and collaborate with others in College. I want to work more with other arts disciplines.”
“I think that every sector of the CVPA is amazing and having them work together more could result in some impressive work.”
Although Studio 91 in Cone Residence Hall allows CVPA students with a common passion for the arts to live together in the same dormitory, our students desire to collaborate professionally in the classroom, rehearsal studio, and practice room. They are challenging the academic divisions between various disciplines within CVPA with its Schools of Art, Dance, Music, and Theatre, and instead are craving a holistic approach to their arts education.
We are actively seeking ways for CVPA students to come together from the beginning of their education at UNCG, through their foundational coursework, and in their projects and productions. While CVPA formerly treated Nav1Gate, UNCG’s first-year convocation, as a disciplinary introduction, we now bring CVPA students together for an introduction to all that our College has to offer. As well, we are endeavoring to find a common meeting time for our foundation courses, so that classes can come together periodically.
Our faculty are also creating interdisciplinary opportunities. Last year, Robi Arce-Martínez, Assistant Professor of Movement/Acting in the School of Theatre, directed a production of Luis Rafael Sánchez’s play The Passion of Antígona Pérez. He collaborated with Maurice Watson, Assistant Professor of Dance, for the choreography and with David Aarons, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, for the incidental music. Theatre students thus had the opportunity to work with dance and music professors.
Greensboro Project Space, the School of Art’s downtown gallery, provides an off-campus venue for students from different arts disciplines to collaborate. Last fall the Association of Graduate Students in Dance sponsored an “Improv Crawl” and coordinated with local musicians, dancers, art galleries, and businesses for an evening of live dance and music performances engaging the local community in downtown Greensboro.
I believe there are additional opportunities for collaboration and inclusion within CVPA and challenge the faculty, staff, and students to find ways to bridge disciplinary divides and to bring the arts together. Together, we are stronger and more creative together than we are apart!
Sincerely,
bruce d. mcclung, Dean
College of Visual and Performing Arts
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THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX—OR OUTSIDE THE SCHOOLS—IS SOMETHING CVPA STUDENTS AND FACULTY ARE DOING MORE OF THESE DAYS. FROM THE MESHROOM MASH-UP OF ART, DANCE, AND MUSIC TO A WEB SERIES WEAVING TOGETHER THEATRE, POP TECH, AND MEDIA STUDIES TO A PROJECT THAT BRINGS DANCE AND DRAWING TOGETHER AT THE WEATHERSPOON ART MUSEUM, CVPA IS BREAKING BARRIERS AND CREATING COLLABORATIONS. | |
A recent Meshroom in Durham. Photo credit: Chris Charles, Courtesy of Duke Arts | |
DROP IN. DROP OUT. MEET THE MESHROOM ON YOUR TERMS | |
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“Drop In. Drop Out. Bring a Friend.”
That is the tag line for a new event coming to Greensboro in February through a partnership between Duke University Arts and the UNCG School of Dance.
Those are also literally the only instructions for the event, according to Caitlyn Schrader (’22 MFA Dance), CVPA’s Director or Community Engagement, who is co-curating the event, along with School of Dance Director Lee Walton and kt williams (’23 MFA Dance).
The event is called Meshroom, and Schrader promises that it will be an experience that you will not soon forget:
“It’s kind of wild. You walk into something that is so unfamiliar. It’s almost difficult to describe because it is so experimental. It’s not like ‘come see this play’ or ‘come see this dance performance,’ because it’s not that. It does involve work from visual artists, musicians, and movement artists, but there’s no stage, no script, no rehearsals. It is strictly improvisational. It’s more about process than product.”
Read more here.
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Liam Roos, Yisel Ortiz, and Associate Professor Michael Flannery checking footage during production of the School of Theatre’s web series I ❤️ Collaboration. Photo credit: Jannida Chase | |
THE MAKING OF A WEB SERIES: I ❤️ COLLABORATION
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I❤️Collaboration, a thirteen-part web series developed by students and faculty in the School of Theatre, School of Music, and Department of Media Studies, can be seen as a training ground, a recruiting tool, and now, as a contender in a comedy film festival.
More about that later. First, let’s roll back the tape to where it all started:
“We’d been talking for years—even before the pandemic made us take everything online for a while—about adding some sort of video component to our theatre season,” says Michael Flannery, Associate Professor of Acting for the Camera. “We did a trio of short films two years ago, and I thought this time it would be fun to do a mockumentary, something sort of like The Office.”
Flannery worked with two students, Andre Otabor and Jeffrey Payton, both seniors in the BFA Acting Program, to brainstorm what that might look like. They wound up with a story about college students whose final exam is hijacked by the graduate teaching assistant who was humiliated by someone in the class, and they are forced to complete a scavenger hunt to pass.
Read more here.
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A dancer improvises as an artist sketches in the Weatherspoon Art Museum Courtyard. Photo credit: David Lee Row, University Communications | |
DRAWN TO DANCE: BRINGING ART TO LIFE | |
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Art may be set in stone or hang upon a wall, but it’s never lifeless.
Viewing art as dynamic and fluid is something that students in UNC Greensboro’s School of Dance appreciate more than anyone. With UNCG’s Weatherspoon Art Museum, two graduate students created a pilot program where art inspires dancers, and dance inspires artists.
Liz Anderson and Tiffany Moss Hale are the brains behind “Drawn to Dance,” a series of free public events at Weatherspoon where UNCG dance students improvise performances for art students to sketch or film.
Read more here.
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Taylor Allison (’22 MFA and ’18 BFA Studio Arts) has been named Special Events Manager for Greensboro’s Downtown Parks, Inc.
River Hedgepeth (’22 BA Drama) recently became Assistant Director of the Arts Annex at Duke University. River also continues to run The Gender Gallery (@thegendergallery), an interdisciplinary documentary theatre project that explores the expansiveness of gender through community, creativity, and performance in the South, which River developed while a student at UNCG. River has also secured funding from Alternate Roots and ManBites Dog Theater Fund, empowering a talented team of local gender-expansive artists to create two compelling new works.
Savannah Jenkins (’22 BFA Dance) has joined the UNCG School of Dance as Administrative Assistant. In addition to earning her dance degree at UNCG, Jenkins obtained minors in Anthropology and Arts Administration. She dances with the Liminality Project and hopes to explore further the intersections of art and the human experience.
Bethany Uhler Thompson (’20 DMA and ’17 MM Cello Performance) had her work recognized by ABC Action News in Tampa Bay, which recently shared a story about the music program that she directs with foster-involved children. Watch the story here.
Sarah Gooch (’18 BM Percussion Performance) has had two recent gigs at Dizzy’s Jazz Club in New York. On January 30th, she played in the Celebration of Women in Jazz, curated by Alexa Tarantino and Cécile McLorin Salvant. She will play a Valentine’s Day show with the Morgan James Band on February 14th.
Stoney B. Mootoo (’16 BA Theatre) is making her directorial debut this month with Death of a Salesman at the Opera House Theatre Company starring Tony and Grammy nominee NaTasha Yvette Williams (Some Like It Hot) and Fracaswell Hyman (Broadway veteran and television writer). The production runs from February 22nd to March 3rd at Thalian Hall in Wilmington.
Kamilah Bush (’15 BFA Theatre) has been named “One of Six Theatre Workers You Should Know” in the Pacific Northwest by American Theatre Magazine. Bush is currently Literary Manager at Portland Center Stage. Her ten-minute play Mamas & Papas was featured in The Fire This Time Festival in January. Read more here.
Megan Kaplan Hollis (’06 BM Music Education) marched in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade 2023 as a member of the Band Directors Marching Band, a group made up of four hundred music educators from across the United States and Mexico including seven from North Carolina. The band also gave a special performance at the 9/11 Memorial.
Tammy White (’94 BM Music Education) was selected to represent North Carolina as one of “50 Directors Who Make a Difference” by School Band and Orchestra Magazine. A teacher for twenty-nine years, Tammy is Director of Bands at Kiser Middle School in Greensboro. Read more here.
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Alumni News & Notes are compiled from self-submissions
and from the University’s news clip service.
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Faculty Artist Exhibition and Triad Alumni Reception
Friday, February 9, 2024 @ 5:00 pm
Greensboro Project Space, 111 E. February One Place, Greensboro
Register Here
Atlanta Alumni Brunch
Sunday, February 11, 2024
McCray’s Tavern Midtown, 1163 W. Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta
Register Here
Los Angeles Alumni Brunch
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Triad Alumni Reception following UCLS Presents: Garth Fagan Dance
Friday, April 5, 2024
UNCG Auditorium
Register Here
Chicago Alumni Brunch
Sunday, May 5, 2024
*Invitations to CVPA Events come via email and/or snail mail, so please make sure we have your current contact information. Use the button below to update your information.
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FACULTY/STAFF NEWS & NOTES
Catena Bergevin (Part-Time Lecturer in Arts Administration) won the 2023 Spirit of Service Award from the Guilford Nonprofit Consortium, which wrote the following: “Catena stepped up to play many roles across our community and within the Consortium this year. She helped plant seeds for the Plus Program—a series of workshops for nonprofit managers—, which the Consortium will introduce in early 2024 in partnership with Goodwill Industries of the Triad and Business High Point/The Interchange. She has led the charge in creating and growing the Guilford County Community Centric Fundraising cohort, which is exploring new ways to center social justice and equity into fundraising practices.”
Barbara Campbell Thomas (Director of the School of Art and Professor of Painting, Printmaking, and Drawing) has a two-person exhibition at the Columbus College of Art and Design. “Painting for a Space” is up through February 24th. Thomas’s paintings are also featured in Domino magazine. Read more here.
Mark Engebretson (Professor of Composition) performed two original works at the International Saxophone Symposium hosted by the United States Navy Band at George Mason University last month. Engebretson performed “The Outside” for alto saxophone and computer, which also features a text by Greensboro poet Brian Lampkin, and “d_forme” for baritone saxophone and computer.
Robin Gee (Professor of Dance) will present her latest dance film, What’s Bred in the Blood and Bone, at the 22nd Annual Dance Camera West Film Festival in Los Angeles, which is considered among the top-tier arts platforms showcasing cinematic dances from around the world. Gee’s film will also be shown at the 52nd Annual Dance on Camera Festival at Lincoln Center this month with Gee introducing her film.
Connie McKoy (Marion Stedman Covington Distinguished Professor of Music) has been named the 2023–2024 Herb Alpert Scholar for the Berklee College of Music. The residency includes a keynote address for the Berklee Symposium on Music Education. Dr. McKoy will also visit classes to engage with students and faculty and to share her research on culturally responsive teaching in music education.
Rachele Riley (Associate Professor of New Media and Design) will show her artwork in the exhibition “Imagination and Collage” at Chicago’s Artist Replete Gallery from February 14th to 17th, organized in conjunction with the College Art Association (CAA) 2024 Annual Conference. Rachele will also present at CAA on the artist panel “Shifting Space” on February 15th.
Leah Sobsey (Associate Professor of Photography) has her project “This Earthen Door” with collaborator Amanda Marchand on view at the Sachs Museum at the Missouri Botanical Garden through March. It was reviewed by Maria Popova in the Marginalian: “Painstakingly recreating all sixty-six pages of Dickinson’s herbarium in large-scale anthotypes made with juices from sixty-six species of plants the poet grew in her garden, they offer something uncommonly lyrical—part color study and part time travel, harmonizing the ephemeral and the eternal, radiating the quiet consolation of the dialogue between nature and human nature.” Read more here.
Faculty/Staff News & Notes are compiled from self-submissions
and from the University’s news clip service.
Submit your Faculty/Staff News here.
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IN MEMORIAM: DR. CLARA O’BRIEN | |
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Clara O’Brien, Professor of Voice, passed away unexpectedly on December 18, 2023. Dr. O’Brien was a member of the UNCG School of Music faculty for the past fifteen years.
Dr. O’Brien’s international career began when she was awarded the Sonderpreis des Badischen Staatstheaters—a prize created especially for her at the 1st International Coloratura Competition, Sylvia Geszty in Stuttgart, Germany. She appeared on such European stages as Berlin, Luxembourg, Strasbourg, Dresden, Leipzig, and Frankfurt, and domestically in Chicago and Dallas.
For many years, she was engaged as soloist at the State Theater of Baden and based her career from Germany. Her operatic performances received Opernwelt’s Best Performance citations in both the Emerging and Established Artist categories.
Read more here.
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UPCOMING PERFORMANCES AND EXHIBITIONS | |
There are just three more artists left in the 111th season of UNC Greensboro’s Concert and Lecture Series. Visit ucls.uncg.edu to get your tickets to live your life with live arts! | |
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Moroccan photographer
known for her staged photographs of Arab women in contemporary art
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Internationally acclaimed contemporary American
dance company led by The Lion King choreographer Garth Fagan
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Saxophonist, recording artist, and educator | |
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CLOSING SPOTLIGHT
Family of jazz legend Miles Davis visited campus on January 19th to attend a benefit concert for the UNCG Miles Davis Jazz Studies Program. The benefit was sponsored by Music for Love, a local foundation founded by businessman Franco Nannucci, and raised $81,000 for student scholarships. Pictured here with the trumpet that Davis played on the recording of Kind of Blue are (from left) Vince Wilburn, Jr. (Davis’s nephew and a former drummer with Miles Davis), Nannucci, Cheryl Davis (Davis’s daughter), Erin Davis (Davis’s son), and Steve Haines (Professor of Double Bass). Photo credit: Thomas Heflin
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The College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA) e-Newsletter is published eight times a year in September, October, November, December, February, March, April, and May.
The Newsletter is emailed to CVPA alumni, faculty, staff, students, patrons, and donors. Please feel free to forward your copy, and anyone who would like their name to be added to our distribution list can contact us via uncgarts@uncg.edu.
The e-Newsletter is edited by Terri Relos, Director of External Relations. Archived issues can be found in the “News” section of the CVPA website. To submit Alumni News & Notes, please use this form. To submit Faculty/Staff News & Notes, use this form.
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100 McIver St, Greensboro, NC 27412-5010
Tel: 336-334-5789
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