November December 2020 College News

1 Ana Baer’s screendance Imágenes de una Realidad , a collaboration with Mexican Dance Company Contradanza 2 Daniel Garcia’s screendance Staccare 3 Kaysie Seitz Brown with students during her Global Outreach in Trinidad & Tobago, as discussed in her Dean's Seminar presentation 10 | November & December | College News DANCE Dance Studies, Per formance & Choreography, Single Teaching Certif ication, & Dual Teaching Certif ications FACULTY ACCOLADES Ana Baer’s screendance La Sabina (in collaboration with Rocio Luna and Joaquin Lopez Chas) was selected as Te Programmer’s Choice at the Huntington Beach Cultural Cinema. Ana’s screendance Imágenes de una Realidad [ 1 ] (collaboration with Mexican Dance Company Contradanza) was awarded Best Experimental Web and New Media by Huntington Beach Cultural Cinema. Ana’s screendance Tule (collaboration with Heike Salzer and Richard D. Hall), was awarded Best Short Documentary by the Athens International Digital Festival and received an Honorary Mention at the V Festival Internacional de Video Danza, Mexico City. Her screendance Being Together (collaboration with Austin’s all abilities Dance Company Body Shift and Texas State Merge Dance Company), screened at Festival Internacional de Cinema Lleida Visual Arts, Lleida, Spain and at the College of Adaptive Arts , Saratoga, CA. Kaysie Seitz Brown was featured in zippia.com in an article about the job market in the dance industry. Brandon Gonzalez helped produce a virtual addition of Te Texas Dance Improvisation Festival that was hosted by Te University of Texas at El Paso. He served on the video dance concert curatorial committee for the festival as well as facilitated an improvised "virtual jam" with festival participants and live musician, Ira Echo. Te video concert attracted submissions from international dance artists and can still be viewed on UTEP's Teatre and Dance YouTube page. Christa Oliver was a panelist at the 2020 Emerson- Blanquerna Global Pre-Summit titled “Building Bridges through Civic Engagement.” Te Pre-Summit - which is organized by Emerson College (Boston, Los Angeles, Kasteel Well) in close partnership with the Blanquerna School of Communication and International Relations (Barcelona) took place virtually through the video conferencing platform Zoom Oct. 22-23. Christa’s choreography “Posture of the Heart” was featured in Issue 11 of Dancer Citizen. Christa Oliver and Merge Dance Company hosted a virtual residency with choreographer, performer, activist, and educator Bernard Brown. Nicole Wesley curated and co-directed the 2020 COCO Dance Festival entitled Alien. Te festival included 24 choreographers from 9 countries presenting on an online forum. Te Contemporary Choreographers’ Collective, who present the festival, launched its frst website. Nicole also organized a teaching exchange residency for her Dancer Curriculum students at Miller Middle School in San Marcos and Mountain Valley Middle School in Canyon Lake. Te Texas State teaching certifcation track students were able to teach a variety of genres at both schools, remote and f2f. STUDENT ACCOLADES Daniel Garcia’s screendance Staccare was awarded Best Dance Film at the Reel East Texas Film Festival. [ 2 ] Damian Padilla auditioned and made the 2020-2021 Spurs Hype Squad, a dance team with the San Antonio Spurs. Damian will be completing his teaching certifcation in the spring of 2020. ALUMNI ACCOLADES Alumni Mark Gonzalez (in collaboration with current student Daniel Garcia ), Tate Navarro , Angela Ocnaschek , Jazz Ovalles , and Lilly Thurman all had screendances selected for screening in the CoCo Dance Festival (Trinidad and Tobago). Jaqueline Olivares presented at the NDEO Virtual Conference in October. Victoria Way , Director of the Jordan High School Legacies dance team in Katy ISD, won Ashley HomeStore’s Red Apple Award for going the extra mile for Jordan High School sophomore Madi Joiner, by including the wheelchair bound student in dance team activities. DIVISION ACCOLADES Opening Door Dance Teatre presented A Virtual Homecoming , October 12-18. It was curated by Artistic Director, LeAnne Smith , edited and assembled by Brandon Gonzalez , and produced by Scott Vandenberg . It included the works of 24 Dance alumni, spanning the years 1980-2019, and presented work in a trilogy of dance concerts. Several of these artists have been nominated and/or won awards for the dances they submitted. Faculty Ana Baer , Brandon Gonzalez , Shay Ishii , Lynzy Lab , Amanda McCorkle , and Michelle Nance also contributed works to the showcase. Talkbacks were held after the Oct 15, 16, and 17 concerts, and attended by choreographers, performers, and audience members who discussed the choreographic process as well as dance in a virtual setting. DEAN ' S SEMINAR Kaysie Seitz Brown was honored with the invitation to present "STREAM in Motion: Enhancing Public School CurriculumTrough Dance for Young Viewers & Doers" at the Dean's Seminar on Nov. 18. She spoke about her work with elementary school students as both performers and audience members in San Marcos and throughout Central Texas as well as her Global Outreach in Trinidad & Tobago. To view her presentation, click here . [ 3] College of Fine Arts and Communication | 11