About the Department

The Berea College Modern Dance Troupe has been producing Kinetic Expressions, an evening of modern dance, since 1997. This years concert includes choreogrpaphy by faculty Susan Spalding, Stephanie Woodie, Stephanie Browner and Roy Scudder-Davis as well as choreography by Modern Dance Troupe members Stephanie Clark, Lene Christiansen, Tao Zhang, Layla Thomas, Bob Major and Katie Racz.

The dances to be presented represent an exciting array of dance styles including modern, jazz, classical, contemporary and improvisation. The concert provides contrast with several large group pieces, alongside trios, duets and solos. Many of the choreogrpahers and performers have impressive professional dance backgrounds and give this quality of work to the concert. This talented collective of individauls bring their personal vision and inspiration while displaying the technique and craft of their dance form.

"Kinetic Expressions" on Tour

The Berea College Modern Dance Troupe is a group of students, faculty and community members that work through the year to create and produce contemperary concert dance. We have produced a formal concert titled "Kinetic Expressions" for the past four years. For the past two years we have expanded our offerings to include school performances in the local community. One of our goals is to continue offering performances and workshops to schools in the surrounding area.

Our performance includes an exciting array of dances choreographed by faculty and students. We usually do this in the form of a lecture/demonstration so that some discussion can take place before and/or after each dance. During this lecture/demonstration we briefly introduce the concepts of space, time and energy so students can begin to identify these elements in the finished dances.

Our workshop material and activities are based on KERA goals and expectations for dance and the Core Content for Arts and Humanities Assessment. We hope to present dance in a way that helps students do the following:

• Experience the expressive potential of their bodies through dance
  
• Experience how movement can be used to express ideas and feelings
  
• Experience activities that explore dance concepts of space, time and energy
  
• Experience the relationship of dance to other art forms
  
• Discover the ways that the above experiences can be used as tools to help build dances

The Modern Dance Troupe is under the direct leadership of Stephanie Woodie who holds an MFA in Dance and a teaching certification for dance in K-12 grades. She has been teaching in the physical education department at Berea College for 8 years.

Follow-up materials can be provided in the form of handouts and activity suggestions. These materials can include activities to link dance to other subjects such as literature, social studies and math.