Dance Festival Honors Students’ Performance

"Dreams of Flight" featured at the Gala Concert and the final presentation.

March 26, 2011

“Dreams of Flight,” a work created by Dawn Springer, postgraduate fellow in dance at Dickinson, premiered last fall at Dickinson’s Dance Theatre Group concert.

Dickinson College dancers recently performed a Gala Concert selection and the final presentation at the Northeast Regional American College Dance Festival Conference at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa.

Sponsored by the American College Dance Festival Association, the national dance festival provides a venue for students and faculty to engage in three days of performances, workshops, panels and master classes taught by instructors from across the region and country. The festival also offers a unique opportunity for students and faculty to have their works adjudicated by a panel of nationally recognized dance professionals.  

The festival centerpiece is a series of adjudicated concerts. Each participating college performs one or two works before nationally recognized dance professionals. Forty to 50 performances are judged at each conference; approximately12 are chosen to be showcased at the Gala Concert.

Nine dancers from Dickinson, one of the 23 schools at conference, performed “Dreams of Flight,” a work created by Dawn Springer, postgraduate fellow in dance at Dickinson. Springer’s work, which premiered at the Dance Theatre Group’s 2010 fall concert, was named a Gala Concert selection and also was chosen as the conference’s closing performance  (March 12).

Dickinson dancers performing at the conference were: seniors Ariel Graham of Anchorage, Alaska, Laura Sullivan of West Hempstead, N.Y., and Carrie Johnson of Centreville, Va.; juniors Lia Brown of Hanover, N.H., Hannah Helfman of Catonsville, Md., Kevin Piñero of Dingmans Ferry, Pa.; sophomore Emily Hughes of West Chester, Pa.; and first-year students Kia Pipkin of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and James Cousins of Finksburg, Md.

Learn about Dickinson’s new certificate program and specialized courses in ballet and dance.
See pictures of student works, including “Dreams in Flight.”