The University of Virginia’s dance program has led alumni to careers in documentary film, arts education and even medicine.
UVA’s dance minor, housed within the Department of Drama and led by artistic director Kim Brooks Mata, turns 20 this year. The dance minor’s establishment, according to an alumna producing a podcast on the program’s history, is largely the result of student efforts.
“We like to think of history as clean-cut,” 2016 graduate Sage Tanguay said. “But really, usually, there are lots of smaller bursts of activity, and that was definitely the case for the dance minor.”
Tanguay is the host of a forthcoming podcast detailing the program’s history, called “Minor Movements: The Story of UVA Dance.”
In 1974, not long after the University began admitting undergraduate women on an equal basis with men, workers installed mirrors and ballet barres in a room inside the newly built drama building. UVA hired Nora Shattuck, a lecturer in dance, and eventually introduced courses in ballet, jazz and modern dance in the 1990s.
Stéphane Glynn, upper left, kneeling, upper right, and lower right, says the dance minor still influences his work as a documentary filmmaker. (Contributed photos)
But it wasn’t until 2006 that the University established the dance minor. A renewed student effort in the early 2000s helped convince University leaders of the need for an academic dance program.
“There were a lot of people around the University, especially in the Department of Women, Gender & Sexuality, who were signaling to administrators they needed a structured dance program. But students were extremely involved in making that happen,” Tanguay, who is now the executive director of an arts organization in Bath County, said.
Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp became the first full-time lecturer in dance. In 2011, Brooks Mata was hired as an interim director, and joined the drama department as director of dance in 2012. In 2015, she was promoted to professor on the general faculty.
Stéphane Glynn was a student during the early years of the program.
“It was Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp who was the head of the program my first year, and then Kim for my last three years. I just reached out to them because I knew that was something I wanted to pursue,” Glynn said.
Glynn, who grew up in Northern Virginia, attended a prestigious math and science magnet school, where all of his classmates were “at the top of their game” in STEM subjects. After he and a friend tried out a Latin dance class on a whim, dance became an outlet.
“It was so different from anything else that I was doing or that I had studied. There was still pressure, but it was a different kind of pressure,” he said. “It was joyous and fun.”
Glynn graduated in 2013 with degrees in media studies and psychology, as well as a minor in dance. He earned a master’s degree in film at the University of Utah, specializing in screendance, or dance for camera. Dance introduced him to his love of film.
“I’d already been studying films, but I’d never actually made anything. Because of the dance minor, I actually started making stuff.”
Glynn is now the chief operating officer of Vavani Productions, an Emmy-winning production house based in Salt Lake City that specializes in documentary filmmaking. He and a colleague recently directed “Barefoot Boy,” about the modern dance choreographer Bill Evans. Glynn said his study of dance gave him an awareness he otherwise wouldn’t have. He still uses it today.
Sage Tanguay, right, kneeling, is making a podcast about the dance program, called “Minor Movements: The Story of UVA Dance.” (Contributed photos)
“I didn’t come in with the goal of being a professional dancer or a choreographer, but there was something about the intersection between dance and all these other areas of study that I really appreciated and that I’ve carried with me,” he said.
Zoe Ziff likewise came to UVA not intending to become a professional dancer, but knowing dance would be an important part of her college experience. Ziff graduated in 2022 with a degree in biochemistry and is now a third-year medical student at UVA’s School of Medicine.
“My parents worked for the government, so we moved around a lot. The classic thing we would do is move to a new place, and I’d join the local dance studio. It was the way I connected to whatever place I was at the time,” Ziff said.
It was part of how she connected with UVA.
“I wanted to be involved from day one, and I was never really into competition dance, so the performance-based aspect really drew me,” she said.
Because dance is a minor, it introduced Ziff to people from across the University, studying everything from the arts to engineering. She says she now applies a similar interdisciplinary approach to medical school. As a Hook Scholar, she pursues health humanities and arts research and has led a workshop on kinesthetic awareness – essentially, body awareness – in a clinical setting.
“One of the most obvious places it comes into play is in the operating room. There’s this choreography between the surgeon, the patient, the scrub tech, the medical student, the resident. All of this communication happens silently because you’re anticipating the surgeon’s next move. Even something as simple as not breaking the sterile field requires body awareness,” she said.
