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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Faculty Members Dance Into Spotlight

The fall semester is a time of transition for Middlebury’s Dance Program, as three new faculty members begin to make their mark in the wake of the retirement of longtime Professor of Dance Penny Campbell and the imminent retirement of Professor of Dance Andrea Olsen, who is on sabbatical leave this year. Assisstant Professor of Dance Christal Brown envisions a revamping of the dance curriculum, which will aid students in becoming embodied scholars with critical lenses for the creative outlet of the medium.

Brown expressed the hope that the program’s image to the greater campus is one of clarity and accessibility.

“We want to make it clear that dance is just as rigorous an academic discipline as others,” she said. “It can be easy to dismiss a field of study one knows little about, especially those in the arts, as not as academically serious as, say, physics or economics, but each area of study holds it own challenges and rewards, and no one discipline is greater than another.”

As the dance program evolves, the three new faculty members will bring their varying perspectives and visions to Middlebury this year.

Tzveta Kassabova is joining the long-term faculty as an Assistant Professor of Dance. Originally from Bulgaria, she came to the United States in 1999 with the intention of studying meteorology at the University of Maryland.

“I knew my secret mission was to dance, and so I ran away to New York,” she said.

With her Masters in meteorology in hand, in New York City she danced with the David Dorfman Dance Company and in other choreographers’ works. After a few years, Kassabova returned to the University of Maryland to pursue her MFA in dance, expand her views on art and build a body of original dance works. She then began showing her own choreography in the Washington, D.C. area and teaching at the University of Maryland and George Washington University. Before coming to the College, Kassabova taught for two years as a full time guest artist at the University of Florida, where she was involved in shaping the dance program and curriculum, as she hopes to do at the College as part of the core dance faculty.

During the summer Kassabova attended a workshop led by Olsen, where she experienced firsthand the teaching of a professor who has been a guiding force in the dance program for so long.

“It was wonderful to get a sense of continuation ... of exchange,” Kassabova said.

This semester Kassabova is teaching Introduction to Dance and Advanced Beginning Dance, in which she strives to create a welcoming experience to students just beginning or continuing their journey with dance, and to encourage them to explore and expand their capabilities.

Trebien Pollard is the new Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance and the Artistic Director of Dance Company of Middlebury (DCM) this year. A gymnast in early life, Pollard was introduced to dance in high school, and after studying mathematics education at Florida A&M University, he moved to New York City to train at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. He then joined the Martha Graham Ensemble and continued dance professionally for 12 years in various other companies, including Pascal Rioult Dance Theater, Erick Hawkins Dance Co., and the MET (Metropolitan Opera Ballet). In 2004 he received his MFA in Dance from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts and began teaching and choreographing for the University of Southern Mississippi, Adelphi University, Queens College and Goucher College before arriving at the College.

Pollard’s work as a choreographer often explores themes of identity and our perception of it. By integrating costumes, poetry and music with performance, his work challenges audiences to explore different ways of seeing. In directing DCM this year, he expressed his hope that students will be open to collaborative inquiry and discovery.

“When you come in with too many of your own ideas based on where you’ve come from, it doesn’t leave room for exploring, for experimenting,” he said.

Pollard is teaching Dance History in the fall, as well as an open ballet class.

In the Artist-in-Residence position this year is Scotty Hardwig. After growing up in the Appalachian Mountains of Southern Virginia, he double majored in English and Dance at the University of Virginia. Hardwig chose to be a professional dancer precisely because it was one of the hardest things he could have done, and because of the honesty of dance as a form of self-expression.

“Whenever I’m performing in my work or whenever I make a piece, I’m creating something that’s the most me that I could express, in the most full and intense way possible,” he said.

Hardwig’s work in choreography is deeply engaged with digital media, and he explores how technology can help us make connections rather than alienating us from ourselves and our environment. By creating dance works for film in natural locations, Hardwig is able to bring his audience, via the language of the body and the medium of the camera, to places and experiences not possible in the traditional setting of a dance theater. In his spring Movement and Media course, Hardwig hopes to share the myriad possibilities for integrating the potential for digital technology into the art form of dance while maintaining a strong focus on technique, particularly in contact improvisation.

This fall Hardwig is teaching Anatomy and Kinesiology and will be choreographing works for the Fall Dance Concert, the Faculty Concert and the DCM.

The fall, the Dance Program is overflowing with the fresh experience of these new faculty, who are all three excited to share their perspectives on the study of dance and to shape the development of dance at the College.


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