SMTD Dance Alumna Ricki Mason, who will receive an “Emerging Artist Award” at this year’s SMTD Alumni Awards Ceremony, leads a workshop in which dancers use their bodies to reveal tiny stories about themselves through scores and choreography from Mason’s current repertory. Mason is a choreographer and performance artist who combines a decade-long dance career with a deep love of drag to create work that comes straight from the gut, wrapped in deliciously campy candy coating, not to obscure the truth, but to hyper-color it.

Each Modern Lab session features a different guest artist teaching a master class and sections from their repertory. This panorama of the contemporary dance field is presented to broaden the students’ awareness of potential career possibilities.

Each guest artist conducts a 30-minute technique class/warm-up and then teaches repertory that is performed by the class. In the final 15 minutes, faculty coordinator Bill De Young conducts a Q & A with each artist, discussing their career; their recommendations for transitioning from student to professional, and what they look for when they audition dancers for their projects.