Terraka Garner
Staff Writer
Passionate dancers at Idaho State University have gathered together to initiate a club dedicated to exhibiting the academic aspects of dance. This club is one of 33 student chapters within the National Dance Education Organization, or NDEO.
NDEO at ISU was recognized as an official club on March 18, 2015. Club meeting times and dates are sporadic but can be seen by joining the club’s Facebook page. Any ISU student is eligible to join.
“It’s a beautiful way to extend experience and when you think about it, isn’t that what your college education is about?” said club adviser Lauralee Zimmerly. “It’s about having more experiences that transform you in a very personal way and also that transform your thinking. I think those transformative experiences and I think being part of this larger scope of dance is really helpful.”
NDEO at ISU is working in conjunction with the National Honors Society for Dance Arts, or NHSDA. Zimmerly and her colleague Molly Jorgensen will be working together to determine who does and who does not meet the criteria to be in the honors program.
The criteria for induction into the honors society and for graduating with NHSDA honors can be found online at ndeo.org.
“We’re part of a bigger national honors society, which I think in itself is a great resume builder but also just to get involved and learn about dance: Where did it come from? How much do you really know about it? And then what other things you discover about it can just increase your love for dance and help you share it with someone else,” said NDEO at ISU secretary, Koreen Boydstun.
The NHSDA honors program benefits dance majors in particular. ISU declared dance to be a major in the fall semester of 2014. This year will be the first year for students to graduate with a major in dance.
“They were previously dance minors working on all of the components for the dance minor then when we got the dance major established it was like ‘OK, you do this, this and this then you will also have a dance major,’ so we had people who really switched from the minor to the major program,” said Zimmerly. “They will be our first graduates this year. It’s pretty exciting.”
According to Zimmerly, the Idaho State Board of Education realized that ISU’s “fellow university,” the University of Idaho, has had an established dance major program for several years and because of that, the board members deemed it necessary to bring a dance major to the opposite end of the state of Idaho.
A student in the dance major program at ISU may pursue anything from a Bachelor’s up to a doctorate degree. The dance major provides classes that focus on the physical characteristics of dance as well as classes that discuss the academic side.
“Not only do we want you to know about ballet, tap, jazz and modern dance but there’s a whole different role to the dance world because often times it’s about religious worship or it can be about social reflections,” said Zimmerly. “It’s one thing to do beautiful pirouettes and leaps and these gorgeous moves across the stage but what if you want to speak within your art form in terms of the politics and the social aspects of your dancing? So we dance for those reasons as well.”
According to the ISU Student Activities Coordinator, Valerie Davids, NDEO at ISU aims to do community service, but due to the short time NDEO has existed it does not yet have any ideas set in stone.
Boydstun stated that the club hopes to travel to schools and to put together a lecture demonstration to get people involved, such as by dancing with senior citizens or children.
“Every little girl wants to be a ballerina,” said Boydstun.
Club members have made plans to go to Utah for a conference and they would eventually like to connect with the College of Southern Idaho and Boise State University.
“There is this whole social side of dancing. Sometimes I do a solo and I dance by myself, but most of the time I get to dance in very reaffirming close connection to other human beings,” said Zimmerly. “It’s not texting ‘I love you’ on a cell phone, it’s actually being in that space, sharing those qualities of expression in a very, very physical way with people. I think the more we become disconnected from people, dance needs to continue to be that vital force and that is that thing that keeps us connected physically, bodily to people. Everyone should dance.”
