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CVPA is committed to our community’s holistic well-being and health. Faculty teach students how to achieve a flow state in which they are immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process. Intentional and mindfulness activities can all increase focus and help students to achieve their creative potential as artists, teachers, and scholars. Additionally, students are shown how to avoid performance-related injuries, such as tendonitis, shin splints, focal dystonia, and stress fractures.
Breathing is central to so many of the arts that comprise CVPA: consider an actor delivering a monologue, a dance company in motion, a voice student in an opera, or an instrumentalist playing in a symphony orchestra. Even those arts that at first don’t seem to rely on breath—such as painting or theatre education or musicology, involve giving a gallery talk, teaching a class, or delivering a lecture—are reliant on breathing. Breathing is central to all the visual and performing arts even if it is not immediately obvious.
While most of us breathe unconsciously with shallow “clavicular breathing” (from the area of the collarbone, or clavicle), “diaphragmatic breathing” (from the diaphragm or the large muscle beneath the lungs) involves breathing by pushing out the belly. Such breathing engages the parasympathetic nervous system, which increases blood flow, resulting in a lowering of our pulse and blood pressure. Intentional, diaphragmatic breathing is one mindfulness technique to reduce stress and to increase focus.
Steve Haines, Director of the Miles Davis Jazz Studies program in the School of Music, recently told me that to be a great jazz musician, you need to be relaxed to be able to react musically to what is going on through your own playing. To help a double bass student, Steve introduced the calm app, which includes breathing exercises through visualizations. The student followed the bubble visualizations while playing, which slowed his breathing and freed him up to react musically. Steve recorded the student’s playing, and the improvement was immediately obvious.
UNCG has introduced “Spartans Thrive,” which is centered around the theme of holistic well-being and health. The goal is “to provide students with an understanding of holistic wellness and to provide a hub for finding information, resources, and activities related to each of eight wellness dimensions—intellectual, physical, social, environmental, emotional, vocational, financial, and cultural.” We at CVPA are proud not only to be part of this initiative but also to continue our emphasis on wellness in the arts. We all can benefit from the adage “Just breathe.”
Sincerely,
bruce d. mcclung, Dean
College of Visual and Performing Arts
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PIONEERS IN PILATES: NEW CERTIFICATION COURSE | |
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Professor Mila Parrish working with Victoria Williams in the School of Dance’s new Pilates certification course.
Also in the class (from left) are Liz Edwards, Anna Creekmore, and Davida Reid. Photo credit: Terri Relos.
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“And now place your hands on the pegs, extend those legs up to the ceiling, and breathe.”
Mila Parrish walks around the studio speaking in a calm almost melodic tone, guiding her students through a Pilates flow, stopping from time to time to adjust a leg or arm to help the dancers achieve the proper positions.
The students are pioneers in Pilates at UNCG’s School of Dance—the first cohort that will earn a certification to teach the exercise form.
“A certification program leads towards job security,” says Parrish. “And it aligns beautifully with the direction these dancers are already going. It fits in with their coursework. It’s not extra. It’s not more. It just deepens their already experienced bodies, and these students are earning certification from the premier organization for Pilates teachers. They will come away with an incredible marketability.”
Read full story here.
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Janet Lilly (Professor of Dance) seen here in sirsasana, a headstand that is part of her Iyengar Yoga practice. Photo provided by Janet Lilly. | |
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Professor of Dance Janet Lilly likes being upside down:
“My students will walk past the studio and see me, and they’ll ask, ‘What are you doing standing on your head for all that time?’”
It all started when she was a child:
“I couldn’t do a headstand when I was a kid. I would go up—then fall right over. My mother was a tap dancer. She took acrobatics classes, too. She put all four of her daughters into dance classes and hoped that at least one of us would be a dancer. I’m the only one that stuck with it.”
Lilly performed as a principal dancer and teacher with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in New York and subsequently taught for fifteen years at the University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin, before joining the UNCG School of Dance as Director in 2011. She served twelve years as School Director and returned to the faculty in 2023.
Lilly is also a yogi. She practices and teaches Iyengar Yoga in addition to contemporary dance technique, choreography, and repertory.
Read full story here.
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New York City Alumni Brunch
Sunday, December 3, 2023 @ 12:00 pm
Trattoria Dell’Arte, 900 7th Avenue, New York
Register here.
Faculty Artist Exhibition and Alumni Reception
Friday, February 9, 2024 @ 5:00 pm
Greensboro Project Space, 111 E. February One Place, Greensboro
Atlanta Alumni Brunch
Sunday, February 11, 2024
Los Angeles Alumni Brunch
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Alumni Reception following UCLS Presents: Garth Fagan Dance
Friday, April 5, 2024
UNCG Auditorium
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 submit updated information.
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Ward Robinson (’19 PBC Jazz, ’10 MPH) will be playing with his band, Icarus, at the Flat Iron in Greensboro on November 8th.
Charlena Wynn (’13 BA Studio Art) has joined Bayview Hunters Point Center for Arts and Technology as Associate Director of Education. Wynn looks forward to using their experiences as a visual artist and former public school teacher to move forward the Center’s educational strategy and to support San Francisco Bay Area youth and young adults through program management and instructor training.
Jerry Myers (’08 DMA Choral Conducting) was selected for the Missouri Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. This past summer, he received the Missouri Choral Directors Association’s Presidential Award for Excellence. Dr. Myers has been a Professor of Music at St. Louis Community College at Meramec for the past fifteen years where he also serves as the Honors Program Coordinator. In 2021 he took the reigns as Executive Director of Crescendo Youth Choirs. For ten years prior to his tenure at St. Louis Community College, he was on the faculty of Washington and Lee University.
Johnathan Hamiel (’07 MM Music Education) has been named President of the North Carolina Music Educators Association.
Edward McClellan (’07 PhD Music Education) has published The Psychology of Teaching and Learning Music (Routledge 2023). Dr. McClellan is the Rita O. Huntsinger Distinguished Professor of Music, Associate Professor of Music Education, Coordinator of the Music Education Program at Loyola University New Orleans. The Psychology of Teaching and Learning Music introduces readers to the key theoretical principles, concepts, and research findings about learning and how these concepts and principles can be applied in the music classroom. Showing students how to apply psychology theory and research in practice as music educators, this book provides a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate music education students and faculty.
Kim Cuny (’03 MFA Theatre, ’93 MA Speech Communications) facilitated a “musical instrument petting zoo” at Peacehaven Community Farm last month. Cuny invited School of Music students Nate Mothershed and Cady Robinson to bring their saxophone and string instruments to provide opportunities for seeing, hearing, and playing. Cuny says the event is part of efforts toward an “Arts for All” shift to include differently abled people in arts and cultural experiences.
Karen Ingram (’96 Studio Art) has art in the show Embodied Futures & the Ecology of Care at BioBat Art Space in New York City. The show features some of Ingram’s Petri dish paintings, artworks she created using live bacteria. The show runs until March 2nd.
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FACULTY/STAFF NEWS & NOTES
Aaron Allen (Associate Professor of Musicology and Director of the UNCG Environment & Sustainability Program) recently published Sounds, Ecologies, Musics (Oxford University Press 2023), which is a co-edited volume containing fourteen chapters by nineteen authors organized into three broad sections about the interactions of musical, sonic, and environmental issues; the relationships of sounds, ecologies, and music with traditional and Indigenous knowledges; and various interdisciplinary approaches to ecomusicology. Read more here.
Nikki Blair (Associate Professor of Sculpture) is featured in the October 2023 issue of Ceramics Monthly, the premier publication for ceramics.
Barbara Campbell Thomas (Director of the School of Art and Professor of Painting, Printmaking and Drawing) opened a solo exhibition of paintings at Hidell Brooks Gallery in Charlotte. In her new body of work, Campbell Thomas mines the presence of abstraction in her own matrilineal ancestry, calling upon the handwork of her great-great grandmother to anchor the visual language employed for these ten paintings. The exhibition, titled “Edna’s Diamonds,” ran for the month of October.
Gavin Douglas (Professor of Ethnomusicology) received support from the Scholars’ Travel Fund for travel to the Annual Conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Ottawa, Canada. He’ll be presenting the paper “Talking with the Mouse about Sound: Consulting for Disney’s Raya and The Last Dragon.”
Mark Engebretson (Professor of Composition) and Alejandro Rutty (Professor of Composition) have concerts scheduled in November as part of New Music Greensboro. Engebretson’s “The Difficulties” will perform at Scuppernong Books on November 9th at 7:30 pm, and “Brazilian Jazz and Beyond” with guest artists Cassio Vianna and Wagner Trindade will be on November 10th at 7:30 pm in the School of Music Organ Hall. Rutty performed his project “Why Bass?” at the Blandwood Museum on November 5th. Connect with New Music Greensboro here.
Heather Holian (Associate Director of the School of Art and Professor of Art History) was recently interviewed by the Los Angeles Times entertainment reporter for an article on the legacy of Disney. Read the article here.
Annie Jeng (Assistant Professor of Piano) and her contemporary chamber group, Khemia Ensemble, have been selected to perform at the Chamber Music America Conference Showcase in New York City in January 2024.
Lindsay Kesselman (Visiting Assistant Professor of Voice) traveled to Texas for a guest teaching and performing residency at the University of Texas, San Antonio last month with her collaborators in the Haven Trio (Kimberly Cole Luevano, clarinet and Midori Koga, piano). She performed works composed for Haven including De Otro Mundo by Ivette Herryman Rodriguez (funded by a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant), all we are given we cannot hold by David Biedenbender (funded by a Barlow Endowment Grant), and the première of Would that loving were enough by Lee Kesselman.
Elizabeth Perrill (Professor of Art History) will be a guest lecturer at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico on November 11th. Perrill will be discussing her approach to art historical and contemporary research in South Africa and KwaZulu-Natal. Based in life-history methodologies, Perrill’s work has been grounded in conversations with isiZulu-speaking artists since 2003. She will discuss how this work informs her curatorial practice and the collaborative film project that was undertaken this summer in and around the Durban metropolitan area.
Leah Sobsey (Associate Professor of Photography) debuted her collaborative project with artist Amanda Marchand at Photofairs NY with Rick Wester Fine Art alongside the Armory show at the Javits Center. The project was featured in four reviews including Artnews. This Earthen Door travels to the Sachs Museum at the Missouri Botanical Gardens and will be on view from November to April. Additionally, Datz Press in Seoul, Korea will publish This Earthen Door where Sobsey will travel as an invited guest to present a lecture on the work at the Datz Museum in March. This Earthen Door is represented by Rick Wester Fine Art, Chelsea, NY.
Joan Titus (Professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology) was interviewed for the October “Featured Research” story from the National Humanities Center titled “Music and Its Uses.” The article details interviews with four current Fellows and their work on music and culture. Titus answers several questions about her third book project on Shostakovich and the cultural politics of Soviet music and cinema. Read more here.
Eric Willie (Professor of Percussion) co-authored the book Rehearsing the Concert and Marching Percussion Ensemble published by Meredith Music. The other co-authors were Michael Burritt (Eastman School of Music), Doug Perkins (University of Michigan), David Skidmore (Third Coast Percussion), Brian West (Texas Christian University), and She-e Wu (Northwestern University).
Faculty/Staff News & Notes are compiled from self-submissions
and from the University’s news clipping service.
Submit your Faculty/Staff News here.
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UPCOMING PERFORMANCES AND EXHIBITIONS | |
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UNC Greensboro’s Concert and Lecture Series, the longest running series of its kind in North Carolina, continues with
Marcus Printup: Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra musician and music educator;
Jewel: Four-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, actress, and author whose life story—from homelessness to discovery in a San Diego coffee shop to selling millions of albums— is as compelling as her music;
Lalla Essaydi: Moroccan photographer known for her staged photographs of Arab women in contemporary art; and
Garth Fagan Dance: an internationally acclaimed contemporary American dance company led by The Lion King choreographer Garth Fagan.
Visit ucls.uncg.edu to get your tickets, and Live Your Life With Live Arts!
All events are on sale now.
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CLOSING SPOTLIGHT
This image, taken by fourth-year dance major Laniya Smith, won the “Week at the G” photo contest and will be featured on a Gate City Boulevard billboard this month. Smith captured Clara Kennedy rehearsing under a campus tree while taking photos for the Fall Dances poster. The photo was chosen as the winner in a social media vote.
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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 e-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
vpa.uncg.edu
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