OSU Dance

06/19/2025

Happy Juneteenth!

06/18/2025

In Spring 2025, Dr. Irvin Manuel Gonzalez led the Department of Dance’s inaugural course through the Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project (OPEEP). The semester focused on introducing students to the concept of dance as a tool for community engagement and practices for developing mutually beneficial arts partnerships in and beyond prisons. Additionally, students had the opportunity to collaborate on creating choreographies that showcased dance’s potential as a tool for storytelling. The class, which included both campus students and incarcerated students from London Correctional Institute, became a space to learn firsthand about how prisons operate.

Zoey November, an MFA student in Dance, shared, “This course with OPEEP has been incredibly transformative for me because it has actually inspired me to go into a career with education for incarcerated people. But I think that every student should take a class with OPEEP because it’ll challenge you to grow in ways that you haven’t grown before. You’ll build a type of community that’s literally like no other. And who knows, it might just change your future.”

Carlos, a student at London Correctional Institute, reflected, “Over the course of fifteen weeks, my regard for dancing shifted from a venal veneer to a medium capable of engaging in the spaces of socio-political governance. Dancing, and the study of dancing, can elucidate social issues through the immediacy of the body...”

Dr. Gonzalez’s research—focused on how Mexican and Mexican American, working-class bodies create transnational communities through Latine social dance practices—was the inspiration for this course. Combined with his previous work with the Dancing Through Prison Walls organization in Los Angeles and extensive time developing various community engagement projects, the course immersed students in understanding how we construct connections across various groups and communities through art.

The course will return in Spring 2026, with applications to enroll opening this Autumn semester.

06/18/2025

Your Spring 2025 InForm is here! ☀️
https://dance.osu.edu/inform/spring-2025

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

In January 2025 I became interim chair of the Department of Dance, and I can’t tell you what a privilege and a joy it has been getting to know the world-class faculty, the super-talented students and the dedicated and resourceful staff of this remarkable unit. I will remain in this position until July 2026 and look forward to learning more about the exciting and ever-evolving world of academic dance.

First and foremost, I would like to extend my most heartfelt congratulations to the students who completed their degrees. The department awarded 23 BFA, 4 MFA and 2 PhD degrees in spring 2025.

As I hope many of you might have experienced firsthand, the Spring Concert, “Together We Move,” was a rousing success, featuring original works by lecturer Donald Isom, Assistant Professor Momar Ndiaye and Associate Professor Daniel Roberts. We were also privileged to include work by renowned choreographers Ronald K. Brown (rehearsed by Associate Professor Nyama McCarthy-Brown) and Doug Varone (rehearsed by Assistant Professor of Practice Eddie Taketa). The Varone collaboration was the result of an an artist-in-residency program funded by Vice Provost for the Arts Lisa Florman. This collaboration will extend into the summer of 2025 through our Holistic Approaches to Transformative Choreography (HATCH) program, culminating in a performance featuring both student and Varone Company dancers at the Wexner Center for the Arts in the fall.

Among faculty highlights, we welcomed into the department Assistant Professor Kym McDaniel, and Assistant Professor Tany Calamoneri was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure. The department also conducted a faculty search for a specialist in African Diaspora Percussive Dance, but, as of this writing, that search had not yet been concluded.

Moving forward, we are excited to welcome new cohorts of 19 BFA, 5 MFA, and 2 PhD students into the department this fall. We are also gearing up for the reaccreditation process by the National Association of Schools of Dance (NASD), an effort that will be spearheaded by the most senior member of our faculty, Professor Valarie Williams, who will also be assuming the all-important role of Chair of the Faculty Council for the upcoming academic year.

In closing, let me say again what a privilege it has been serving in the position of interim chair and to say how much I look forward to the adventures that lie ahead!

Andrew C. Shelton
Professor, History of Art
Interim Chair

READ INFORM SPRING 2025>
https://dance.osu.edu/inform/spring-2025

06/17/2025

Calling all alumni! We want to hear from you! As a member of our rich alumni heritage, we invite you to share research, projects, performance, travel, jobs, education, and personal updates: https://dance.osu.edu/about/alumni/submit

Alumni Feature: Jessica Cavender (MFA 2016)

Jess Cavender is a dance documentarian and digital preservationist working regionally and nationally. She is a founding team member of the OhioDance Virtual Dance Collection, the first initiative in the U.S. dedicated to capturing and preserving dance history at the statewide level. She has edited hundreds of documentary shorts, developed an immersive gallery exhibition, and created a touchless gesture interface that reimagines how audiences engage with archival materials. She has taught dance and media literacy in both secondary and higher education institutions across Ohio and continues to advocate for innovation in arts education and equitable access. Jess also serves as a developer and digital archive manager for ChromaDiverse, a national organization supporting historically under-served dance communities through archival technology and strategy. In addition, she is a producer for the PBS affiliate Ohio Channel, covering the Ohio state legislature, supreme court, and executive branches. As an active interdisciplinary artist Jess's work integrates physical interactivity, motion tracking, and screendance, and her documentary films have earned three regional Emmy nominations.

06/13/2025

On June 11, 2025, the Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC) announced the recipients of the first round of its 2025 Artist Projects grants. Grant applications were reviewed and scored by community members this spring. In total, 44 artists working in dance, fashion, literary arts, music, theater, visual arts and film were awarded $532,246, including $10,000 each to Ohio State Dance Assistant Professor Alfonso Cervera and Alumni Nico Lawson (MFA 2024), Joshua Manculich (MFA 2017), and Mollie Wolf (MFA 2023).

Alfonso Abraham Cervera Jr. - En mi CueRPO / In my BoDY
Nico Lawson - My body’s liturgies: A Grieving Landscape
Joshua Manculich - A Simple Ode
Mollie Wolf - (un)entanglement

On June 11, 2025, the Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC) announced the recipients of the first round of its 2025 Artist Projects grants. Grant applications were reviewed and scored by community members this spring. In total, 44 artists working in dance, fashion, literary arts, music, theater, visu...

06/13/2025

The College of Arts and Sciences Center for Career Success granted MFA Student Mary Storm a Grad Student Career Accelerator Fund Award for the Summer 2025 cycle. Mary received $2,450 to participate in an intimacy direction workshop series in Denver, CO.

Originally from Curtis, Nebraska, Storm graduated from the University of Nebraska at Kearney in May 2020. She graduated summa cm laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Technical Theatre and a minor in Dance. Currently, Mary is pursuing a Master's of Fine Arts in Dance at The Ohio State University. She began her career studying and teaching various forms of dance including tap, jazz, modern, lyrical, ballet, clogging and tumbling. Through her experiences as a dancer she soon became more interested and familiar with live theatre and now specializes in dance, choreography and directing.

Photo by Kerri Garrison

ASC Career Success

The College of Arts and Sciences Center for Career Success granted MFA Student Mary Storm a Grad Student Career Accelerator Fund Award for the Summer 2025 cycle. Mary received $2,450 to participate in an intimacy direction workshop series in Denver, CO.

06/12/2025

🌹🪻🌷

Celebrate the life of Ann Lilly, leave a kind word or memory and get funeral service information care of Schoedinger Midtown.

06/09/2025

❤️👏🔥

PhD Student Sidra Bell premiered her work "Areas of Relief" commissioned by ODC/Dance for the troupe’s “Dance Downtown” program April 10–13, 2025 at the Blue Shield of California Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA. Check out the reviews and feature news stories, ...

06/09/2025

Thanks for joining us for our 2025 Summer Dance Intensive for High School Students! We hope you had as much fun as we did and look forward to seeing you next year!

Photos by Celia Benvenutti

06/06/2025

In Memoriam: Ann Lilly

Ohio State Dance mourns the loss of Emerita Professor Ann Lilly, who died recently. She worked for Columbus City Schools and knew Department of Dance founding Chair Helen Alkire through Susan Schroeder, who was an adviser for student teachers. Helen needed a stage manager for the first dance concert in the spring of 1960 in Mershon Auditorium and she asked Ann to take on that role. The concert, which was funded by the athletic department, was a success, and Ann continued working for the Department of Dance as a stage manager for several years.

Ann became assistant to the chair when the department was founded in 1968. “My duties were to do all the things [Helen] didn’t like to do,” said Ann during an interview with Ohio Dance. Ann worked tirelessly with Helen to build university support to create a performance-based dance major and to move the department into Sullivant Hall from the Armory building.

“Huge Buckeye fans, if Helen Alkire was the head coach, Ann Lilly was the quarterback, defensive lineman and tackle all rolled into one,” says Emeritus Professor Dave Covey. “She was the muscle behind Helen’s intellectual vision, fighting for space, funding and faculty lines necessary to create what would become the Department of Dance. I know Helen was also at the line of scrimmage, ready to block any opponent who dared to stall their drive as they marched down the field, but I firmly believe Ann was the leader in pass interceptions.”

“Ann Lilly joined the Department in its early years and was chief advisor to students and faculty, and most importantly to founder Helen Alkire,” says Emerita Professor Karen Bell. “After decades in Dance she became Assistant Dean in the College of Arts. She’s lived a long and friend filled life in German Village and later at Westminster Thurber. All of us who have been in the department over the past 50 years owe Ann our appreciation as she helped the department become the preeminent institution it is today. May she rest in peace.”

Ohio State Dance mourns the loss of Emerita Professor Ann Lilly, who died recently. She worked for Columbus City Schools and knew Department of Dance founding Chair Helen Alkire through Susan Schroeder, who was an adviser for student teachers. Helen needed a stage manager for the first dance concert...

06/05/2025

We're having a blast on our Summer Dance Intensive Campus Scavenger Hunt! 👀👣🌞

06/04/2025

MFA Student Zoey November won first place for the arts at the Edward F. Hayes Advanced Research Forum on February 28, 2025 for her oral presentation, "Making the Audible Visible: Improving Accessibility in the Performing Arts Through the Artistic Design of Subtitles." The Edward F. Hayes Advanced Research Forum (formerly the Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum) showcases the innovative and exemplary research being conducted by Ohio State graduate students and postdoctoral scholars across the full range of graduate degree programs and research topics and facilitates fruitful exchanges between graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, faculty, the administration, and the public.

November earned her B.A. in Dance with a minor in Special Education from the University of Vermont. Her work has received numerous awards and recognition, and has been selected for adjudication and performance at the American College Dance Association and the Columbus City Dance Showcase. She has taught for the OhioDance Festival, as well as for Corpuscule Danse (Montreal's first physically integrated dance company) and Improvisation, Contemporary, and Social Forms for Disabled dancers throughout Vermont.

MFA Student Zoey November won first place for the arts at the Edward F. Hayes Advanced Research Forum on February 28, 2025 for her oral presentation, "Making the Audible Visible: Improving Accessibility in the Performing Arts Through the Artistic Design of Subtitles." The Edward F. Hayes Advanced Re...