Character Performers at Walt Disney World Fall 2011

Sophomore Dance Studies Major Cara Mossman and Spring, 2011 graduate Andrea Phillips will join the Disney College Program as character performers from August, 2011 to January, 2012. Spring, 2011 graduate Tiffany Huffman performed in the same program Fall, 2010.

Student serving as intern at American Dance Festival

Dance Studies majors Katie Mundt will serve as an intern in archives at the American Dance Festival in Durham during the 2011 summer season.

Student awarded NC Dance Alliance Scholarship

Sophomore Katie Mundt was awarded an NC Dance Alliance scholarship during the NCDA Annual Conference at Elon University in September, 2010. Katie is majoring in Dance Studies and pursuing a K-12 License.

Dance Alumnae chosen for Even Exchange Dance Theatre

Alumnae Jill Guyton '09 and Ashley Spears '09 have been selected as company members with Raleigh's long standing modern dance company Even Exchange Dance Theatre.

Dance Alumnae at Broadway Dance Center

Alumnae Brenda Burton '09 dance minor and Aleah Ham '10 dance major participated the  Broadway Dance Center's internship program in New York City during summer 2010.

Meredith Associate Professor's Video Work Featured on Hulu.com

"A Polka Dream" choreographed and directed by associate professor of dance Carol Finley has been selected by the New York Dance Films Association to be part of Hulu.com's Dance for the Camera channel. The work was part of the 2000 Dance on Camera Festival and Tour.

To watch visit http://www.hulu.com/watch/174407/dance-on-camera-a-polka-dream

 

 

Meredith Professor Sherry Shapiro Receives Fulbright Award

Journal

Sherry Shapiro, professor of dance and director of women’s studies, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to research and lecture at the University of Cape Town in South Africa from January through July 2009.

The Fulbright Program’s purpose is to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the rest of the world.

South Africa’s post-apartheid national curriculum makes the country an appropriate setting for Shapiro’s research, which brings together her work in dance and the social justice aspects of women’s studies.

“The new national curriculum, adopted in 1996, required that all disciplines must address issues of social justice, identity and equality,” Shapiro said. “I am interested in how dance programs are implementing issues of social justice into the curriculum.”

Shapiro has received what is known as a 60/40 Fulbright grant, in which she will spend 60 percent of her time researching and 40 percent teaching.

Her research will focus on dance education in the new South African curriculum. She will examine the implications for dance education in the process of democratic transformation.

She will also teach a choreography course for dance education students at the University of Cape Town and in the community, and provide workshops in dance education for teachers.

The course and workshops will use a process Shapiro developed and uses at Meredith. She describes the process as using “dance as a vehicle for increasing both self and social understanding among students.”

Shapiro is looking forward to the experience of working with “a community that is focused and concerned with ethical, moral and social justice issues … this process will be really enriching to my work.”

Through researching and teaching in an international setting, faculty members “gain new eyes,” Shapiro said. “We have so much to learn from other teachers, scholars and from other students and situations.”