Alumna Jennifer Harge (BFA ‘02) is the artistic director of Detroit-based Harge Dance Stories. This fall she will share excerpts of her company’s premiere work the line between heaven and here with the Department of Dance. The piece traverses the historic and cultural implications of loss within the African American experience, paying close attention to how black bodies live when they experience death and dying so frequently and often violently. The movement was developed using a question by dance scholar Susan Foster in her essay Choreographies of Protest. In regards to the black bodies in question, Foster asks: “How have these bodies been trained, and how has that training mastered, cultivated, or facilitated their impulses?” the line between heaven and here works to answer these questions using contemporary modern dance, text, and song.

Each session features a different guest artist who teaches a masterclass and sections from their repertory—this panorama of the contemporary dance field is presented to broaden the student’s awareness of what career possibilities are out there. The guest artist conducts a 30-minute technique class/warm-up and then teaches repertory that is performed by the class.

In the final 15-20 minutes faculty coordinator Bill De Young conducts a Q and A interviewing each guest artist about their career and what recommendations they have about the transition from student to professional and what they look for when they audition dancers for their projects