summerdance 2008
summerdance 2008 || One Day Tap Workshop || Half Day for Teachers
Housing Information (coming soon) || Registration & Pricing
About Bill Evans || About Debby Robertson
Repertory Dance Theatre’s annual two-week workshop offers a wide-ranging dance experience including classes in Modern Dance Technique, Composition & Improvisation, Brazilian, African, and Hip Hop styles. Summerdance is for intermediate and advanced dancers ages 16+.
Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center
138 W Broadway | Salt Lake City, Utah 84101
801-534-1000 | rdt@rdtutah.org
Registration deadline June 1, 2008. Some partial scholarships available for junior high and high school teachers. RDT reserves the right to adjust class placement based on demonstrated skill level.
June 23 - July 4
Salt Lake City, Utah
Guest artist Bill Evans will teach two daily classes at the workshop. Evans
Laban-Based Modern Dance Technique, for intermediate/advanced level modern
dancers will weave movement patterns drawn from Bartenieff Fundamentals and the
Bill Evans modern dance repertory. Laban-Based Improvisation and Composition will
give participants opportunities to explore Laban concepts of Body, Effort, Shape and
Space and to create movement studies.
Daily Class Schedule
9:00 am - 1:00 pm Bill Evans Workshop
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Lunch
2:00 pm - 4:00 pm Brazilian, African, Hip Hop
Bill Evans is active internationally as a choreographer for modern, ballet and tap dance companies, and he performs solo concerts regularly. He was choreographer, leading performer and artistic director of the Bill Evans Dance Company, based primarily in Seattle and then Albuquerque, from 1975 through 2004. BEDC performed in all 50 states and was among the most-booked companies in the country for several years under the Dance Touring and Artist-in-the-Schools Programs of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). He founded the Evans Rhythm Tap Ensemble, which he still directs on a project basis, in 1992. For seven years, he was a dancer, choreographer and artistic coordinator for Utah’s Repertory Dance Theatre, and he serves now on RDT’s advisory board. For two years, he was artistic director and then choreographer in residence of Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers and its professional training program, where he is now a permanent guest artist.
He has choreographed more than 200 works for more than sixty professional dance companies throughout the world and been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and more than seventy other awards from public and private arts agencies in the U.S. and Canada. He received the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and two Awards for Excellence in Dance from the Albuquerque Arts Alliance. He was named Scholar/Artist of the year by the National Dance Association in 1997 and was awarded the National Dance Education Organization Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.
An article about his national impact was featured in the October, 2003 issue of Dance Magazine. He was voted one of the three top American tap dance artists (with Savion Glover and Brenda Bufalino) in the 2004 Dance Magazine Readers Poll. His book, Reminiscences of a Dancing Man: A Photographic Journey of a Life in Dance, was published in November, 2005.
He earned an MFA from the University of Utah and is a Certified Laban Movement Analyst. He has been a professor of dance at the Universities of Utah, Washington, Indiana and New Mexico, where he is now professor emeritus. He is currently serving as a guest artist in residence at the State University of New York College at Brockport Department of Dance. He is artistic director of the annual Bill Evans Dance Intensives, founded in 1977, and the Evans Technique Certification Program, both currently in residence at SUNY Brockport.
Saturday June 28
8:30am-10:00am
Beginning* Rhythm Tap Technique, Debby Robertson
10:15am-11:45am
Beginning* Tap Repertory, Debby Robertson
1:30pm-3:00pm
Intermediate Rhythm Tap Technique & Improvisation, Bill Evans
3:15pm-5:00pm
Intermediate Tap Repertory, Bill Evans
5:00pm-6:00pm
Tap Showcase: Dancers at the intermediate and advanced levels who are enrolled
in the afternoon classes are invited to show work and receive feedback on performance
and choreography from Bill Evans and Debby Robertson.
*Some experience with the fundamentals of tap is expected for Beginning classes.
Debby Robertson moved to Utah several years ago from NYC, where she was deeply involved in the rhythm tap scene beginning in 1979.
After receiving her Master’s degree in dance education from Columbia University, she began intensive training in the jazz-tap style (now known as rhythm tap), studying with masters such as Brenda Bufalino, Charles “Cookie” Cook, Honi Coles, and Gregory Hines. She performed for many years with Bufalino in and around NYC, and was an original member of her company, The American Tap Dance Orchestra. Debby also performed for several years in the experimental tap works of Anita Feldman, and was a founding member of the company “NYCTapworks”. In addition, she has shared the stage and collaborated with tap artists such as Joshua Hilberman, Heather Cornell, Sara Petronio, Tony Waag, and Katherine Kramer.
Though her childhood dance studies were centered in tap, she holds a BFA degree in modern dance from the University of Utah, and has spent many years teaching modern, jazz, dance history, etc on the college level. She has been a part-time faculty member at Salt Lake Community College for 14 years, and currently teaches a rhythm tap class for community members at a space downtown. In 2003 she was the first local tap dancer to be awarded an individual artist grant from the Utah Arts Council for a tap choreography project.
Annually, Debby travels to participate in tap festivals and workshops nationwide, including The Portsmouth Percussive Dance Festival, The Chicago Human Rhythm Project, The NYC Tap City Festival, Rhythm Explosion in Bozeman, Montana, and The Southern California Tap Fest in Costa Mesa.
She is the Utah representative for the International Tap Association, a service/professional organization dedicated to the needs of tap dancers.
The Utah Tap Caucus was formed in 2001 as a collaboration between Debby, BYU Professor Colleen West, and studio owner Janet Gray, with the intention of promoting and increasing the visibility and public awareness of the art of tap dance in Utah. They have produced concerts and workshops, and have introduced Utah to National Tap Dance Day, celebrated on May 25th, the anniversary of the birth of the great Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.
Saturday June 28 | 8:30am-12:30pm | Bill Evans
In this half-day professional development workshop for all dance teachers (in schools or private studios),
Bill Evans will use movement and discussion to explore:
* Principles of human movement & movement technique
* Self esteem through movement expression
* Movement theory, discovery & creation