Inside Out Contemporary Ballet premiered its first ever dance film entitled 100 Days of Dance on Saturday, September 25th, 2021 on Zoom. The film debut was followed by a Q&A with the creators, which you can view HERE. Thank you to our Kickstarter donors for supporting this project, and to everyone who attended this special event.
I am pleased to share that I will be joining the esteemed faculty at Cabrillo College as an Adjunct Professor of Dance for the 2021-2022 school year in Aptos, CA. I am very inspired by community college education. There is a strong commitment to accessibility, inclusion, and diversity, and a strong belief in the power of education to advance human potential. I feel very proud and honored to be awarded this opportunity to share the healing joy of dance evermore. Cheers to a great school year ahead!
The announcement that my graduate school, Mills College, will not be offering degree granting programs anymore is devastating. It’s hard to understand how something like this could happen…things that you think will last forever, that you wouldn’t even think could possibly change, gradually dissolve, shift, and become other than. Maybe this is just what getting older is all about. Whatever it is, it gives me pause.
Today, going to college to study dance is a normal career path. It is a more desirable one for many. However, it’s important to remember that dance has not had a seat at the higher education table for even 100 years yet! The first dance major program was founded in 1926 by Margaret H’Doubler at the University of Wisconsin. How incredible that once upon a time you couldn’t even study dance in college, and now there are so many programs to choose from? Therein lies the reality…it’s hard for small colleges to get the enrollment they need to make it work. (Especially amidst social and political unrest and a global pandemic.)
What I am most proud of as a Mills College alumna is that in 1941, Mills College became one of the nation’s first liberal arts colleges to grant a degree in modern dance in the country. How cool is that? Merce Cunningham, Yvonne Rainer, and Anna Halprin danced in those spaces. For us dance geeks that’s pretty cool. Mills College is a part of dance history.
As an aside, when dance began occupying academic spaces, dance making changed too. It can be argued that new theories, new spaces, and expanded resources breathed life into the way we think about dance, teach about dance, learn about dance, and make dances by way of critical discourse in higher education. It also created job opportunities for teachers and generated dialogue across disciplines. I believe that dance in higher education has been a total game changer for our field. Mills was a part of that.
Beyond the significance of Mills College in dance history, Mills also offered the first computer science major at a women’s college. I mean…
Set in Oakland, California, one of the most radical cities in the world, home to the BLM movement and the Black Panther party, it was the overall charge of the campus culture that struck me the most. A women’s college, one of the few left in the country, with a guiding principle towards equity, serving as a safe haven for LGBTQIA+ communities, dreamers, and first generation heroes. A college like that creates a culture of progress. The fight, the fight be free, to just exist, taught me a lot.
I am awe-struck by the radical women throughout history who have dared to educate themselves and live out loud, and those who fought for an institution like Mills College to exist in the first place. It’s pretty badass, and will be sorely missed.
Now to rebuild…
The Journal of Dance Education published my research on Project Pulse: A Dance Research Experience, a collaboration with Michael Broffman LaC and the Pine Street Clinic in San Anselmo, CA. I am very grateful to share this work with everyone and see where it goes next.
Saturday, April 18th at 1:00pm PST
Livestream performance on Facebook and Instagram, so you can watch it from anywhere!
On April 18th, Inside Out Contemporary Ballet will join the movement choir of the National Water Dance Project. Our group will be moving at Emerald Pools in Zion National Park. Check out our BLOG post to get a little insight into preparations for this pertinent event!
I have accepted a full time tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Dance at Southern Utah University beginning Fall 2019
A humble thanks goes out to everyone in the San Francisco Bay Area who has supported the full flourishing of my career and my dance company, Inside Out Contemporary Ballet. I want to thank our donors, our fiscal sponsor Dancers’ Group, our collaborators, dancers, students, and performing artists who have made our work possible since 2012.
In this time of transition comes much reflection and opportunity for growth. Since finishing my MFA in Dance at Mills College in 2018, I have realized, after 3 years of deliberation, that although my roots lie in classical and contemporary ballet, my artistic interests, academic research, social activism, and other creative projects have evolved beyond the particulars of a contemporary ballet aesthetic. For now IOCB will remain a vessel for my creative work, however I will be creating and promoting work under my own name from now on to provide a larger framework to dream expansively, connect globally, and organize collaborations across aesthetic and conceptual lines.
Stay tuned!
JGDT premieres their newest evening-length work. “Alpha Mouse” explores gender equality and desire.
More information here on the James Graham Dance Theatre Website
Casey Lee Thorne 