UAA’s dance program is returning to the spotlight

The UAA Dance In Concert Retrospective on April 7 was supposed to be the final performance celebrating UAA’s dance community after the University of Alaska Board of Regents eliminated dozens of degree programs across the University of Alaska System, including the Theatre and Dance Program.

Both the Bachelor’s of Theatre and minor in dance were slated to end after spring 2023.

Now, the dance program has returned to UAA with dance classes planned for the spring, and it’s all thanks to that final performance last April.

The retrospective performance had so many attendees that it broke Anchorage Museum First Friday records, said Chair of the Theater and Dance Department Dan Anteau. Among those attendees was Ira Perman, the Executive Director of the Atwood Foundation.

“[Ira’s] been a long supporter of our program, [and] a large supporter of the arts,” said Anteau, “And we weren't even done with the concert, and Ira had come over and was like, ‘I can't believe this is the last performance … What can we do? We have to do something to keep this going.’”

Over the summer, the Atwood Foundation worked with UAA to find ways to provide funding for the program. Anteau said that the Atwood Foundation was able to provide grant funding equivalent to about half of a professor’s salary, and the College of Arts and Sciences was able to provide the rest.

Anteau said that the funding from the Atwood Foundation will continue for three years.

“The hope is that after three years, if we can show that we're building the program back and if we can kind of get it up on its feet, that additional funding might be available for us,” said Anteau.

The dance program, however, is being built back almost entirely from scratch.

The program’s first hurdle is that it no longer has the dance space that it used to. Anteau said that the dance studio in the Professional Science Building has been converted into a human performance lab. That’s made finding a new space for dance classes challenging.

“It was a safe place for dance to happen and thrive. And it was large. And we had one of the most sought after dance studios in town,” said Anteau, “But right now, I cannot even get our dance classes on the schedule because I don't have a dedicated space for dance. So we're trying to figure out what that's going to look like.”

Though dance doesn’t yet have a space, it does have a new professor: Katie O’Loughlin. O’Loughlin has gone through UAA in many different capacities: first as student receiving a B.A. in theater along with a minor in dance, then she taught as an adjunct faculty and has now returned to UAA as a professor after receiving her Master’s of Dance from Ohio State.  

When O’Loughlin talked to The Northern Light at the end of October, she was beginning her third week on the job.

With dance classes not offered until the spring, the majority of her job is currently focused on outreach and letting people know the program even exists. She’s also teaching dance workshops across Anchorage to get the word out.  

“The harder part of this job is like, ‘Oh my gosh, we don't have students,’” said O’Loughlin. With all of UAA’s previous dance majors graduated out of the program, she said that she doesn’t have the base of students that a program would normally have to work with.

Though it is a lot of work to rebuild the program, O’Loughlin also sees the restart as an opportunity.

“Because we are starting from scratch, you can turn it kind of into whatever you want it to be,” said O’Loughiln.

“The program was so solid and so amazing throughout these years, I went through it, I loved it, but there’s always updates … The world has changed and we can change too, and we can start to serve and support our students of this generation in a way that the programs maybe couldn't have from past generations.”

Both O’Loughlin and Anteau underlined the importance of community partnership when restarting this program. Anteau said that he wouldn’t have been able to originally finish off the program without the support of local dance collectives.

Further connection with the local dance community will be a large focus of the program moving forward.

“I think that we were heavily engaged with the community, but it wasn't the focus, and I think it's a little bit more of a focus now,” said O’Loughlin.

Looking forward, O’Loughlin said she wants students in the program to be able to know what dance options exist for them in the broader community. She said that she wanted students to be able to know who they can contact to continue to do dance once they’ve gone through UAA’s program.

Two technical dance classes will be offered in the spring: one in musical theater, and another in contemporary modern dance. The dance program will also be offering a repertory option– which means that students who are a part of that option will be signing up to perform in spring shows.

In an interview with The Northern Light, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Jenny McNulty said that – while she is celebrating the return of dance to UAA – she also wants to focus on the larger picture.

“I think sometimes in the community we think ‘oh, the arts was cut at UAA. That's the end of the story.’ We want to change that narrative,” said McNulty, “We are building strong arts at UAA. We need student support, to be interested in taking … classes in the arts, and we also need community support.”

In addition to the return of the dance minor, UAA is also offering an occupational endorsement certificate for event production, which according to a UAA catalog, “prepares students for a full-time or part-time career in the performing arts, specifically technical theatre or working backstage.”

This comes after UAA’s Bachelor’s of Theatre also officially ended in the spring.