VCU news

By Leila Ugincius

With the start of the spring 2016 semester, the curtain rose on the 35th year of the Department of Dance and Choreography in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts. In recognition of this landmark, E. Gaynell Sherrod, Ed.D., chair of the department, and Lea Marshall, associate chair, reflected on the department’s past and focused on its future, which is dedicated to embracing the university’s core values of diversity, equity and inclusion.

While over the years the department has grown — from 25 students enrolled in 1981 to about 100 in 2015 — Sherrod has noticed that as the number of students increased, the demographic makeup of those students shifted as well. Today more than 50 percent of dance students identify as a person of color.

“With that said, there are several implications we need to address,” Sherrod said. “How do we reflect, in a cultural sense, what those voices are and help them get the information they need in order to make their own career happen? How do we also make sure that we have the faculty at the table that will bring that information to the forefront in terms of curriculum?

“Our curriculum needs to shift a little bit as well, not only to address the students of color, but all students, because we want to make 21st-century artists. And 21st-century artists are really global artists.” One way to do this is creating more study abroad opportunities. “If we’re talking about global then we need to get them out in the world,” Sherrod said. Faculty members are already cultivating relationships in different parts of the world and, as a result, about a dozen students are studying in Paris this semester.

Sherrod and Marshall also hope to match the department’s growth with additional space. If the curriculum is to evolve, students need the space to have more time to work in the studio and more time with guest artists such as Akram Khan.

It’s one thing to go to the performance but if they’re coming to our space it’s another thing to have our students actually interact and connect with those artists.

Khan, an internationally renowned British choreographer, only designates one month for performances in all of North America each year. This year, he chose VCU. With a Bangladeshi heritage, Khan is trained in the classical Indian kathak, a percussive, classical dance.

“We have put together events where the artists can interact with students so we have them coming into classes and departments,” Marshall said. “It’s one thing to go to the performance but if they’re coming to our space it’s another thing to have our students actually interact and connect with those artists.”

Complementing Khan’s February performance was FLASH: a Conversation in Hip-Hop and Butoh, a collaboration between Rennie Harris, a famous hip hop dance artist out of Philadelphia, and Michael Sacamoto, a Japanese butoh artist from California. The piece is conceived as a conversation between the two forms.

While the styles differ vastly, the catalysts for each dance have striking similarities: Both are responses to violence against people.

“They both resonate in a very similar way and explore how the body responds to that,” Marshall said. “So butoh is responsive to violence against people in World War II, hip-hop is responsive to violence against people of as a result of the Vietnam War … so those two resonate in that way.”

The visit, discussion and performances were a fitting launch of the department’s 35th year, Sherrod said. Moreover, the visit dovetails with the universitywide conversation on diversity and inclusivity. 

“With these men from different parts of the world ... having this common language through their movement … they tease out not only the commonalities but those things that are different and uniquely interesting. They feed off of each other,” she said. “[Dance] is a good vehicle for people to really see more clearly how differences help move us forward.”

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