Dance forms persist at UM despite lack of funding

Budget cuts at The University of Memphis left the College of Communications and Fine Arts without a dance concentration for theater majors in 2003. Eight years later, students still find a way to make the best of the department's resources.

New Voices, an annual concert hosted by CCFA, features eight dances, entirely student-led and choreographed. The concert, free and open to the public, premieres Dec.1 at 8 p.m. in room 124 of the CCFA building.

The concert was revived four years ago, according to dance instructor Angie Hollis. The works vary from jazz to modern dance. Students began preparing for the performances at the beginning of the semester.

"In the past three years, we decided to name it New Voices because these are new student choreographers expressing themselves in movement," Hollis said. "We now have a major in dance education, but you do not have to be in the dance education major to choreograph."

The dances are each unique, and topics vary by the choreographer, Hollis said. Each piece means something different to the students performing them.

Ebone Amos, senior dance education major, said she chose The U of M for dance because at a previous college, she majored in music business and hated it.

"It wasn't a full dance major, but it was really a chance for me to blend the two loves that I have together," she said. "When I first got here, the program was very small, so I got a lot of much-needed attention with my professors. I've watched the program grow from very small to a little bigger."

Amos' dance for the concert features five artists—four females and one male—who dance around giant cubes to a Kanye West mixtape.

 "I'm taking vocal hip-hop music and putting modern moves to it. I love all the rhythms and story of his music and juxtaposition of the piece.  We're not moving in a typical way you would to this kind of music," she said.  

The cubes represent a place of comfort, Amos said. As dancers move around them, they manipulate them and dance in such a way that they go back and forth to the blocks.

 "It just so happens to be the end of my career at The U of M and the beginning of my life as a professional dancer after I graduate," she said. "It's comforting to be in a place like school where I'm  free to dance and experience positive critique, but I need to graduate and break away and do more things."

Neille Martin, a senior dance education major and one of the choreographers with New Voices, said dance is important to The U of M because it's a valid form of communication and art.

"It promotes unity," she said. "It brings people together and makes them experience other things that they don't know."