A Decade of Beauty: Stivers Annual Spring Choreographers’ Showcase Highlights Faculty Success in Choreography and Education

A decade of arts education fusing academics and performance is the bedrock of Stivers School for the Arts Annual Spring Choreographers’ Showcase, A Decade of Beauty. The event will be held on Friday and Saturday, May 8-9, at the school’s Centennial Hall. The celebratory, ten year marker is significant because it commemorates DeShona Pepper Robertson’s tenure as the dance department’s director. Her guidance has led Stivers dance majors to perform in an unprecedented number of venues locally and nationally and be accepted to college dance programs in increasing numbers. This year, nine of the ten graduating dance majors are slated to dance in university programs in the fall. These achievements will come together in a range of works choreographed by faculty, Kirsten Fricke, Karen Hochwalt, DeShona Pepper Robertson, and Rodney Veal, guests, Terence M. Greene and DeMarcus Akeem Suggs, and a student choreographer. Stivers graduates, Rhea Adkins and Dominique Atwood, will return to perform. Performances take place Friday and Saturday, May 8-9, 7 PM at the school’s Centennial Hall, 1515 E. Fifth St., Dayton, OH. Tickets are $10 for adults and $8 for students and can be purchased at Stivers or by calling (937) 542-7414.

One significant milestone in the dance department is the growth of its ballet program. Ten years ago it did not offer pointe classes-the ballet technique that allows female dancers to dance on their toes. This year, Karen Hochwalt has staged Little Swans or Les Cygnettes. It is the famous quartet from the ballet, Swan Lake, in which ballerinas join hands and dance petite allegro with precision head movements in linear formation. The Stivers version is after the 1895 original choreography by Lev Ivanov and Marius Petipa to the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. “This is a monumental achievement for the dance department,” said director, DeShona Pepper Robertson. “Karen has been stalwart in our ballet education and made students ready for advanced, classical, pointe repertoire.” Additionally, Hochwalt’s For My Father (2011) will be performed with a cast doubled in size due to the ballet program’s growth. Contemporary dances balance the program on the opposite end of the spectrum with Kirsten Fricke’s premiere of Captivity about the humane treatment of animals and guest choreographer DeMarcus Akeem Suggs’ Why Roses Summon Thorns based on last year’s mass abduction of Nigerian schoolgirls.  

As Stivers dance department has grown and developed, it has depended on the contributions of its longest standing faculty member, Rodney Veal.  Veal, a multi-disciplinary cultural educator and choreographer, has two works on the program, Everybody Rejoice and The Great Beauty. Terence M. Greene is another mainstay artist, educator, and supporter of the department. He was the first guest choreographer to work with Stivers dance students ten year ago. Robertson and Greene knew each other from their work at the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company where both were featured dancers for more than twenty years combined. Greene will return to Dayton to choreograph a dance in her honor.

Rounding out the program will be DeShona Pepper Robertson’s 4 Denise, Carole, Addie Mae, and Cynthia (2006)-a work that abstracts the story of the Birmingham church bombings during the historic Civil Rights era and Ca’Pria (2009). A student work and Heaven, Reality, Memory, and Earth (2009), by the late William B. McClellan, Jr., will be performed as well.  

Stivers Annual Spring Choreographers’ Showcase, A Decade of Beauty, takes place on Friday and Saturday, May 8-9, 7 PM at the school’s Centennial Hall, 1515 E. Fifth St., Dayton, OH. Tickets are $10 for adults and $8 for students and can be purchased at Stivers or by calling (937) 542-7414.