Students, Alumni Celebrate 20 Years of Dance Classes at UT Dallas

One score, or exactly 20 years, has passed since the first dance class was offered by the School of Arts and Humanities.

To celebrate the anniversary, UT Dallas students and alumni will present “Score,” a performance that includes original choreography by faculty members Michele Hanlon, Misty Owens and Micki Saba for the student UT Dallas Dance Ensemble.

“It has been a great pleasure watching the dance area grow and evolve for the past 20 years,” said Hanlon, clinical associate professor. “The students that we work with each semester — from art and performance and so many other majors — have been the driving energy behind all that has been achieved. It is great to be able to welcome back a few of our alumni to perform in the show. Their participation in the works has built some wonderful connections for our current students.”

The first of three showings will begin Thursday and run through Saturday, each starting at 8 p.m. in the University Theatre.

‘Light Within the Shade’
Also this week is a poetry reading that highlights a new publication that is a joint effort between two Arts and Humanities faculty members. Dr. Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, who holds the Leah and Paul Lewis Chair of Holocaust Studies, and Founders Professor Dr. Frederick Turner will read selections from Light Within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry at 5 p.m. Wednesday in the Erik Jonsson Academic Center, JO 3.516.

Light Within the Shade includes 135 of the most important Hungarian poems from the 14th to the 21st century, and also includes essays from both Ozsváth and Turner that comment on the writers and works included in the book.

“The sustained effusion of pure verbal energy characterizing Hungarian poetry may be regarded as one of the most striking components of Hungarian poetry. Its history goes far back in time,” Ozsváth wrote in the book.

Art Exhibits in ATEC Building

On Friday, an opening reception for UT Dallas’ newest visual art exhibit, Behind Closed Doors, will take place in the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building starting at 6:30 p.m. The exhibit will examine art that is “made in secret, away from observers or reporters.”

“Although he or she shuts the world out while creating, the artist nonetheless often depends on external, sensory experiences as the impetus for her work, conducting a solitary dialogue with, for example, previous pieces,” Eugene Binder, a former Dallas gallery owner, said about the exhibition. “Once a new work emerges, the artist begins to share their environment with this entity.

“It is of course by no means certain whether or not this new entity will become a likable companion or a jealous, demanding lover — or both — but undoubtedly a relationship has begun, one that is essentially inexplicable to others and therefore, like a clandestine love affair, must remain for a time protected in the sanctity and privacy of the studio and in the mind of its creator.”

The artwork will focus on video, digital photography and sculptural installation. Artists such as alumna Hillary Holsonback MFA’12 and PhD student Danielle Georgiou will be featured.

Also on display in the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building will be work from Ruben Nieto, who earned his master’s degree in fine arts from UT Dallas in 2008.

Nieto digitally “shreds” and reassembles images taken from comic books, then sends the electronic files to academically trained artists at the Beijing Academy in China, who paint the images on canvas. The paintings are returned to the United States, where Nieto applies the finishing touches.

All events this week are free and open to the public.