This week, the young artists of Dance Repertory Theatre, UT’s resident student dance company, will be making the leap to the national stage – quite literally. On May 16, DRT will perform at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as part of the 2006 National College Dance Festival. Back in March, while the rest of the city was preoccupied with that little thing called SXSW, the UT Department of Theatre & Dance was hosting its own confab in the Winship Drama Building: the four-day American College Dance Festival South Central Conference. Its numbers hardly rival South by’s; still, more than 500 students and faculty members from 40 colleges and universities across New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas made it a significant gathering. And it was during the conference that DRT performed “Solemn Opus: The Journey of Lost and Found,” a work for five dancers choreographed by UT professor David Justin, for a panel of adjudicators who then selected it as one of three works to go to the Kennedy Center. Moreover, UT BFA and dance major Kristen Frankiewicz was nominated for ACDFA/Dance Magazine‘s Outstanding Student Performer award and will be considered by a panel at the Kennedy Center. A total of 29 colleges and universities will be represented in this week’s three-day festival, and UT will be the only one from Texas. Break a leg, Longhorns!
This article appears in May 12 • 2006.