Dance Minor at HPU grows in its fourth year

By Ryan, October 1, 2015

By Hannah Corwin, Staff Writer//

Over the past 10 years, High Point University has been expanding not only its size, but its academic programs as well. One recently added minor to High Point’s impressive repertoire is a dance minor.
The dance minor consists of 23 credit hours, five four-credit courses and two one-credit courses. The four credit courses include Ballet, Contemporary Dance, Tap or Jazz (the student can choose between the two), Dance Composition, and either a Dance and New Media class or a Dance and Community Concepts class. In Dance and New Media, students will explore the history of dance and the new media as well as the presence of dance in visual media, including television, film, and the Internet. Dance and Community Concepts focuses on bringing light to the benefits that dance can have on the people in communities that are marginalized overlooked, or underprivileged.
There are also two one-credit courses that a dance minor must complete; however the student can choose to take both Contemporary Studio and Ballet Studio, or the student can take the same class twice. These classes build on techniques learned in the four-credit Contemporary and Ballet classes and offer a more in-depth look into the style.
Madeleine Cassadonte, one of HPU’s dance minors, took the Contemporary Studio and said, “My instructor was Kristen Lucas, who unfortunately is not at High Point anymore, but she introduced me to a whole side of myself I never knew before. I transformed my style completely, becoming more in touch with my earthy side.”
Lindsey Bramham Howie, the Director of the Dance Minor Program and Instructor of Dance said that “currently, about 18 HPU students are Dance Minors.” She and Christine Stevens, an adjunct dance instructor, teach these students how to have a greater awareness of their own bodies, how to listen to their own creative voice and have confidence in that voice, to be knowledgeable of the history of dance and its influences on contemporary dance, to understand how professionals can collaborate with artists of other genres to create interdisciplinary works through participation in main productions, and to have the ability to use the arts to engage communities and to encourage connections between people.
Dance minors also participate in several events. Last year, they attended the American College Dance Conference in Clarksville, Tennessee. While at the conference, students preformed various dance works and studied with the nation’s top dance artists. According to Lindsey Howie, they will be returning this year to the conference in West Virginia. There is also the Spring Dance Concert where faculty members, guest artists, and students preform works. You do not need to be a dance minor to participate; everyone is welcome to audition. What’s more, High Point Dance Minors are already gaining recognition in the dance community. Ashton Kirby, Class of 2015, as of this month, has joined a professional dance company in Texas, while Madison Bryan, also Class of 2015, spent six weeks training and studying at the world renown American Dance Festival and has accepted an internship with them.
Danielle Criss, a senior at HPU, also trained and studied with the American Dance Festival, and she went on to New Orleans, Louisiana where she participated for the second time in the Summer Leadership Institute, hosted by Urban Bush Women at Tulane University. And if that weren’t enough, Danielle Criss is also a member of the Otesha Cultural Arts Ensemble Dance Company.
Madeleine Cassadonte has benefitted from not just the technical training, but the encouragement given by the dance instructors. She said, “The beauty of our dance minor here at HPU is the boundless encouragement we receive on a daily basis. We are pushed to be great, regardless of which direction we go in our future endeavors, and I will be infinitely proud that I decided to become a part of the dance minor here at High Point University.”
Dancers from HPU have already started to make their mark on the world, and they say it will continue to grow with the help of instructors like Lindsey Bramham Howie and Christine Stevens.