The creation of the work is part of a Creator in Residence program that aims to bring world-renowned creators to Lawrence to collaborate with and inspire students and faculty. Launched in the fall and made possible through a gift from Harold ’72 and Mary Donn ’73 Jordan, the Creator in Residence program speaks to Lawrence’s commitment to academic and artistic excellence.��

Battle is an icon in the dance world, having served as artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre from 2011 until late 2023. Future Creator in Residence programming is expected to span a range of disciplines, from sciences to humanities to arts.

Battle has set the tone for the new program over the past year. The connection with students was immediate when he first came to campus for a week-long residency in the fall.��

“These students are multifaceted,” Battle said. “They’re really smart, and they value art, they value dance. They have a lot to express, a lot to say.”

When he returned to campus in February, Battle worked with students and faculty to prepare a performance built on artistic expression. It evolved organically, collaboratively. Battle said he usually comes in with steps already set, but he wanted this to be a collaborative process, with creative ideas flowing both ways.

“To me, that’s my excitement, to always be learning, investigating, trying new things,” he said. “I think this is a space where I felt safe to do that, very much supported by the faculty and by the dancers.”

Battle is now back on campus, the last leg of his residency, to finalize and present the performance, working in partnership with rehearsal director Donegan Kraker and Conservatory faculty Loren Kiyoshi Dempster and Jean Carlo Ureña Gonzalez.

Donegan Kraker said the performance “celebrates and reflects our collaborative ways of working at Lawrence: deep conversation around process, interdisciplinary projects, student/faculty collaborations.”

The musicians, she said, embraced the collaboration as fervently as did the dancers. Prior to Battle’s first visit to campus, Dempster and Ureña Gonzalez worked on building the collaborative process with percussion students by having them watch videos of Battle’s earlier choreographies without sound, co-creating original music ideas along the way.��

Dempster and Ureña Gonzalez then improvised accompaniment for Battle’s dance classes as an initial connection point. They began crafting musical drafts and sending them to Battle for consideration. They brought in multiple traditions, genres, and music cultures, combining inspiration from traditional folk music, Latin jazz, blues, and Baroque classical. During the February residency, Conservatory student Luis Plaza was added to the mix, improvising on piano.��

In the dance rehearsals, there was often at least one musician working live while Battle was setting choreography, and new possibilities emerged.��

“There will be a few surprises – interactions that came about during rehearsals that could only happen with this kind of extended time spent together,” Paek said. “Embodied presence, creating simultaneously in time and space, allows for this kind of powerful collaboration and innovative connection. This kind of hands-on experience—creating art together as faculty, professional artists, and students—this is what Lawrence does so well and why the Creator in Residence program is so specifically well-suited to Lawrence.”

Fajardo-Wilde, a sophomore from Brooklyn, New York, said the experience has been energizing.

“When working with Robert Battle as he set work on me for my solo, we flowed in collaboration, even incorporating a section of improvisation in my solo,” she said. “This made me excited to keep coming back to work with him.”

In the days leading up to the performance, Gibson will be meeting with students and guest teaching several classes, including Musicians in Movement, Articulating the Solo Body, and Dance Collective Ensemble. Lawrence introduced a new dance minor in 2023.

“She has infectious, embodied energy that brings people together and builds healing, wholeness, and belonging,” said Paek, who knows Gibson from graduate school.

She calls Gibson a “force of nature” and said she’s excited for Gibson to share these dances alongside Lawrence students at the April 14 event, titled A Congo Square Gathering: A Reverence for Culture and Healing for Humanity, Down by The Riverside.

“It is a fabulous collaborative opportunity for the five Lawrence student jazz musicians who will be playing with her,” Paek said. “They will get professional experience working with a stellar choreographer, playing both pre-determined songs and improvising for her.”

Raised in New Orleans, Gibson is well acquainted with gospel, jazz, traditional funeral processions, Congo Square gatherings, the Black church, and Second Line parades celebrating community, according to her biography. Together, her dance and music experiences inform her instruction of African American vernacular dance forms.

Gibson received her BFA in Dance from Tulane University and her MFA from Hollins University/American Dance Festival at Duke University. She moved to Dallas and launched her dance career in the early 2000s and has performed all over the world. She is a consummate storyteller, employing body and mind to build a bridge between the arts and academia.

The New York Times featured Gibson and her Second Line workshops in 2022: “In Gibson’s workshops, she starts by helping students find the second line beat in their bodies, the bounce in their feet, hips, shoulders, heads. A strut shifts into a skip, because the dance has to cover ground. Gibson, who calls herself ‘sassy and saucy’ and refers to herself at ‘Mz. G,’ is an encouraging, permission-giving coach.”

Margaret S. Paek, also a visiting assistant professor of dance, said the goal is not to teach mimicry but to discover an individualized understanding of one’s body.����

“Embodiment denotes a relationship to the senses and experiences, rather than the look of a move or any (jazz hands) presentation,” she said.

The title’s emphasis on collaboration reflects a hallmark of dance at Lawrence. Kraker and Paek said they resist an authoritarian, hierarchical classroom structure, and instead embrace critical pedagogy and hope to collaborate with students.

“The goal for me is to support their dance inquiries and for students to grow into artistic peers to be creating within the room,” Paek said. “… We can’t collaborate unless we all have agency.”

The idea of practice is equally central in the degree’s scope. There is no endpoint for dance at Lawrence—the faculty view it as a continuous journey.��

Dance programs did not always exist at Lawrence. Paek was recruited by Brian Pertl, dean of the Conservatory of Music, in 2015. Since then, Paek and Kraker—hired in 2021 through the theater program—have gradually built the department.��

“For me, music and dance are all part of the same expressive/creative continuum,” Pertl said.��“I want all our Lawrence musicians, and really all our Lawrence students, to have the opportunity to explore their creative birthright through embodied practice. For our musicians, dance deepens expressive musicality. It deepens creativity and provides yet another artistic path to experience the magic and joy of artmaking. The dance minor is a beautiful leap forward for all Lawrentians.”��

The dance minor incorporates classes that have already been developed.

“That has been done informally, structurally through our years together,” Kraker said.����

Tori Schneider, a senior art history major from Eden Prairie, Minnesota, is among the first students to pursue the dance minor. She said she’s thrilled to see the growth in dance at Lawrence. When she first took Contact Improvisation, she was in a class of 15 students. A year later—she was working as the course’s teaching assistant—there were more than 30 signups.��

“Dance has exploded here,” Schneider said.

That’s part of the momentum that’s building, Paek said. Establishing the dance minor is the next step, providing increased visibility for the program. Students who have been committed to dance now have a more tangible path. Among those students is Schneider, who has been taking dance classes since her first year on campus.

“I think that the ability to actually achieve a minor really gives the students who put a lot of effort into dance … something to show for it,” she said.��

Schneider finds strong connections between her art history major and her dance minor. The topics often collide in performance art, which Schneider plans to center her senior capstone on.��

“[Although] they may seem very different on the surface level … dance is a form of art,” she said.

Paek elaborated: “The way that we think about dance is dance through a lens that you can engage with anything. So, in one aspect, you can bring whatever you’re majoring in and whatever your interests are and use it as a lens to research.”��

The interdisciplinary nature of the minor allows for course connections all around the university. Students seeking the dance minor will take classes related to kinesiology, musicology, musical performance, stagecraft, and theater.��

Kraker cautions not to consider dance “supplemental”: “Our lineage [of dance here]”, she said, “is an organization of movement, in solo and ensemble ways.”��

Students have a long history of organized dance groups, including a competitive team, swing club, and studio. In addition, guest dance artists visit Lawrence every term, often working directly with students.��

“We’re teaching tactics that are about how you are stepping into the next site of performance,” Kraker said.

That could mean preparing for an interview, or how to gracefully navigate holding power in a room, or “how your body is in relationship to a community,” she said.��

The minor aims to foster individualized and liberating dance experiences. Awareness and reflection are placed above perfection and competition.

“The environment is just really warm,” Schneider said. “They’re encouraging people—no judgment at all.”��

The creative work during this fellowship will be in sync with the learning happening at Lawrence, said Kraker, who teaches movement practices in the Theatre Arts department.

“This is the dance and artmaking we believe in and facilitate in each dance class at Lawrence: deep conversation around artistic process, interdisciplinary collaboration, student/faculty multi-media collaborations,” she said. “This cross-pollination of idea, interest, training is what makes Lawrence unique and is what sets up our artists for post-Lawrence success. I look forward to returning to Lawrence in four weeks and sharing my research methodologies with my classes at Lawrence.”