River Campus hosts 400 students and faculty for annual dance festival

The national offices of the American College Dance Festival Association are always searching for different schools to host the conference. This will be the second time that Southeast Missouri State University has hosted the conference.

"This is a real honor for both our university and the Cape Girardeau community and is the first time the River Campus has hosted a national event of this kind," said Dr. Marc Strauss, professor of dance at Southeast.

Southeast's School of Visual and Performing Arts and the Department of Theatre and Dance will host the American College Dance Festival Association Central Region Conference March 24-28.

Dancers perform on March 25 in the Donald C. Bedell Performance Hall. Photo by Alyssa Brewer

The American College Dance Festival Association is the primary organization in the country for adjudications of choreography and performance of students and faculty. Adjudication is the judging or evaluation of the performances and choreography.

There will be three nationally-recognized dance artists coming to Southeast to teach dance classes to students. Holly Williams, Clifton Keifer Brown and Myron Howard Nadel are coming to judge the performances as well. Strauss is the event coordinator and has been putting the event together for more than a year now.

There will be 400 students and faculty traveling to Cape Girardeau from many different colleges and universities that fall under the American College Dance Festival Association's central region.

The central region covers Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. There will also be a university from North Carolina. The university from North Carolina could not get into the festival under its mid-Atlantic region, but there was an open slot for them to come to the central region.

The festival will consist of 36 dances from the different schools over the three days and the dances will then be judged and critiqued. The judges will give feedback to the students and faculty on the last day of the festival. The concerts will take place March 24-26.

"On Wednesday, March 27, the adjudication will have just decided which eight or nine dances will get to perform tonight at 7:30 p.m. out of the 36 performances from the previous three days," Strauss said.

The first three concerts are open and free to the public, however the concert on March 27 is $3 for students with a Southeast ID and $15 for the public. The performance will be held at the River Campus in the Donald C. Bedell Performance Hall.

"We had to talk with all the departments here at the River Campus, and we're converting one of the museum spaces into a dance studio," Strauss said. "The department of music have graciously moved their schedule around so we can use the Shuck Recital Hall. We have been talking to Eric Redinger at the Student Recreation Center about use of the two dance studios. At times during the week, we are over in Parker. We're using almost every space we can here at the River Campus, too. It's really like heaven for dancers."

The conference will feature dance classes of a variety of different styles of dance from modern, ballet jazz tap contemporary and lyrical. There will be two dances from Southeast students. One of the dances being performed by Southeast students comes from the Jose Limon Dance Company. Each college or university is allowed up to two performances.