<p>The UW Department of Dance is delighted to announce that Mr. Arthur Yorozu has created a new fellowship in the Department of Dance. The Helene Tsutsumoto Yorozu and Arthur S. Yorozu Endowed Fellowship in Dance will support graduate students who perform in the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="/chamber-dance-company">Chamber Dance Company</a>.</span> Helene Tsutsumoto Yorozu was an accomplished modern dancer, actress, and Japanese classical dancer. A 1955 graduate of the University of Washington, she served as the president of the Orchesis Dance Club during her time here. We are so grateful for Mr. Yorozu’s tremendous gift to the department.</p>
<h2>About Helene Tsutsumoto Yorozu</h2>
<p><span> </span>Helene Yorozu was a strong, inspirational, and resilient woman of color. She was born on September 30, 1932, to immigrant parents from Japan. From the age of five, she and her older sister May studied Nihon Buyo, Japanese Classical Dance, which she continued through adulthood. </p>
<p>At the University of Washington, her passion and love for modern dance was ignited. She had an insightful moment realizing she was incorporating her Nihon Buyo training into modern dance. Through nuanced gestures, isolations, thrusts, contractions, and stillness, she was able to express her artistic creativity. She truly loved modern dance—the feeling of being connected to the earth and dancing barefoot was her favorite.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>
<p><span>Helene Tsutsumoto Yorozu and Arthur S. Yorozu Endowed Fellowship in Dance</span> is aligned with the University of Washington’s values to support diversity, equity, and inclusion among the student body. Passionate, creative, enthusiastic, vibrant, an ineffable spirit—these are the qualities the recipient in need of financial aid embodies—as did Helene.</p>

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Alexandra Bradshaw-Yerby</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (MFA ’18)</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">has been named </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Utah Higher Education Dance Educator of the year award from Utah Dance Educators Organization (UDEO)-- the Utah Chapter of National Dance Educators Organization (NDEO). </span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Alex has a way about teaching that allows the class environment to feel extremely inviting and safe. Along with being wise and having expertise about the body, Alex is always open to discussion and helping everyone with their own kinesthetic awareness in becoming smarter dancers. In her classes, it feels like a real dance laboratory where exploration and growth is deeply encouraged. Alex shows immense care for every single student, and goes above and beyond for them in any ways she can. Everyone at SUU is so inspired by her humility, love, and passion for dance, and it ultimately becomes contagious."</span></p>
<p style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">- Darcie Miles, UDEO Newsletter</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="/sites/dance/files/documents/udeo_newsletter_2020_-_online_version.pdf">Read the full newsletter here. </a></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bradshaw-Yerby formerly danced with Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company (RWDC), touring annually throughout the United States and abroad. In fact, several UW Dance alumni have worked with RWDC in the past, including Jo Blake (MFA </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">’17) and most recently, Fausto Rivera (BA’13) who joined the company this past June of 2020.</span></p>

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Charlie Neshyba-Hodges is a dance and architecture alum who graduated </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">summa cum laude, </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">was a Mary Gates Research Scholar, and a Husky Promise Student. He is also a celebrated dance artist who received Best Male Dancer by the European Critics’ Choice Awards in 2003, and the Astaire Award for outstanding male dancer in Twyla Tharp’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Come Fly Away. </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">After graduating, Charlie did a lot of work with underprivileged children  in CA and then entered the ArtCenter College of Design, majoring in product design with a concentration in design for social innovation. He has designed a new toy for 6+ year-olds that looks delightful. </span><a href="https://www.archamelia.com/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">https://www.archamelia.com/</span></a></p&gt;
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Read Hodge’s statement about the toy below: </span></p>
<h3><b>Archamelia; The House of a Thousand Stories</b></h3>
<h4><b>Exercising Creativity, Building Imagination</b></h4>
<h5><b>Inventor Statement:</b></h5>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The audience saw me as a dancer. They watched as I used my body to express for them what couldn’t be said with words. This was done in full view, with only one shot. They saw me chase perfection in everything I did, quietly agreeing that how I recovered from my myriad mistakes inevitably carried more weight. They applauded when I won the European Critic’s Choice Award as Best Male Dancer of the Year, and again when I won the Fred Astaire Award as the Best Male Dancer on Broadway. But for the audience, the experience was really a culmination sandwiched between a rising and lowering curtain. In truth, that single performance was born from hours, days, weeks, months, years of accumulated practice, perseverance, failure, and effort. </span></p>

<p>The Spring Quarter will start off packed with exciting events for the UW Department of Dance as it takes part in the international celebration of Merce Cunningham’s Centennial. In collaboration with the<a href="https://www.mercecunningham.org/activities/calendar//"&gt; Merce Cunningham Trust,</a> the dance departments of <a href="https://www.cornish.edu/news/release/cornish_dance_department_announces… College of the Arts</a> and the University of Washington will host a two-week teaching residency for Merce Cunningham Dance Company alums, Douglas Dunn and Holley Farmer. The two acclaimed artists will guide composition students in both schools through an immersion in Cunningham’s innovated and influential practices in chance operations. Farmer and current MFA candidate in dance at the UW, Brian Lawson will also teach technique classes in Cunningham technique.</p>
<p>Students will showcase their original work created over the course of the two weeks at the informal performance, “<a href="/events/2019-04-13/exploring-creative-legacy-merce-cunningham">Exploring the Creative Legacy of Merce Cunningham,” at the Henry Art Gallery on April 13th  at 2PM.</a> Traditional residencies usually involve company members setting choreography that already exists on students. Unique to this residency is that students will explore some of Cunningham’s most innovative and famous dance making structures, investigating first-hand methods to generate unexpected dances in the moment. In addition, the documentary, <a href="/events/2019-04-11/if-dancer-dances-seattle-film-premiere">“If the Dancer Dances,”</a> by former MCDC member Lise Friedman and Maia Wechsler, about the restaging of Cunningham’s work “Rainforest”, will be premiered<a href="/events/2019-04-11/if-dancer-dances-seattle-film-premiere"> at the Henry Art Gallery on April 11th at 7PM</a>.</p>

<p>Last winter, the Department of Dance hosted two dance artists, Ella Mahler and Erica Badgeley through the bst Residency. This Spring, the bst Residency is supporting two additional artists: Angel ‘Moonyeka’ Langley and Jessica Jobaris.<br /> <br />bst is a residency offered by the UW Department of Dance designed to support local dance artist by offering the gift of space and time in our coveted spacious studios when formal classes are not in session. bst offers the opportunity to experiment, make mistakes, revise ideas, and remain focused on the creative process without the pressure that accompanies commissioned works or performance deadlines. <a href="/body-space-time-residency">(Learn more about bst here)</a><br /> <br /> <br />About the 2019 Spring Recipients:<br /> </p>