Welcome back!  Please explore the sidebar items on the right to learn more about me as a choreographer, dancer and educator.  If you wish to contact me, please do so at denisepurvis@suu.edu.  I would love to work with your company and/or students.

UPDATE!

We have a date!  Shifting Velocity Dance Company's Cedar City Premiere is set for February 14 & 15 at 7:30 pm.  Join us in the Multipurpose Center at SUU for an evening of dance.  The concert will feature several of my dances, along with work by guest artists Summer Robertson of St. George Dance Company, Boizelle Dance, Kay Andersen, Paul Ocampo and Chien-Ying Wang.  Bring your sweetheart on the 14th and receive a discount on both tickets.  Come on out and support professional dance in Cedar City!

Welcome back!  Please explore the sidebar items on the right to learn more about me as a choreographer, dancer and educator.  If you wish to contact me, please do so at denisepurvis@suu.edu.  I would love to work with your company and/or students.

This summer has been very exciting so far.  It began with a very successful performance of my quintet To the End and my duet Journey On in the Contemporary Dance Concert hosted by St. George Dance Company in  St. George, UT.  I am grateful to my breathtaking dancers for performing so beautifully.

A week after the St. George performance, I was presenting at the International Conference on Teaching Somatics-Based Dance Technique.  This was an inspiring experience, as I attended workshops given by some amazing and insightful dance educators.  I was honored to share pedagogy practices designed to access interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences in the high school dance class.  In addition, I premiered a new solo titled Combative and was pleased to receive much positive feedback.   

After the conference I enjoyed a week of Barteneiff & Laban work at the Bill Evans Dance Teachers' Intensive.  I cannot express how grateful I am to have reconnected with my Evans family.  I feel refreshed and excited to begin another school year in August.  The BEDTI family is full of gifted educators who are generous with their talent, insight and care.  Many thanks to all of you for a blessed week!

Immediately after the conference I traveled to Corning, NY to complete a residency at 171 Cedar Arts Center.  It was so exciting to work with the young dancers (and many of the adult dancers) at 171.  Their joy when dancing is evident, as is their hunger for new movement experiences.

This week has been exciting as well.  I just wrapped up a children's dance camp at the Clifton Forge School of the Arts.  We spent the week studying modern technique, learning about the railroad and its significance to the town, and creating dance.  I loved watching my students dancing their own work after only a week of rehearsals.  The pride they felt for their work was obvious and well-deserved.  What special children!

Now I look forward to a few weeks to spend with my family in Virginia.  Soon enough I will be back in Utah gearing up for another year of growth at Southern Utah University.  Keep visiting my blog and checking out my upcoming events.

COMING SOON:  October (Date TBA) - The premiere performance of Shifting Velocity Dance Company, my fledgling company of gifted dance artists.  Also featured is the work of Paul Ocampo, Summer Belnap-Robertson, and Chien-Ying Wang.  And there may be a very special guest artist joining us...

Welcome to my blog!  Please explore the sidebar items on the right to learn more about me as a choreographer, dancer and educator.  If you would like to contact me, please do so at denisepurvis@suu.edu.  I would love to work with your company and/or students.

This has been a busy and very exciting year for me.  As I reflect on my first year at Southern Utah University, I am grateful to work with such a wonderful faculty and such intelligent and gifted dancers.  I look forward to the growth and experiences next year will bring.  A few highlights of my year:

I began a dance workshop series instructed by my elementary education majors and open to area children.  What began with about 65 children taking dance classes on a Saturday afternoon has grown to over 200 children participating in dance, theatre and visual arts four Saturdays per year.  Thanks to collaborators Michael Bahr and Alisa Peterson, we now have a catchy name:  Arts*Lab, make, move, play.  I am very excited about the pedagogic experience this offers all our students, as well as the artistic experience Arts*Lab offers our Cedar City children.  I can't wait to see how the program develops next year.

I am now the Higher Ed Representative for the Utah Dance Education Organization.  Though this position requires a good bit of travel, I am grateful for the opportunity to connect with such a strong and devoted network of dance educators.

I was nominated for Professor of the Year!  Though this award went to someone much more deserving, I am honored to have been nominated.

On June 14 & 15 I will share two dances with the St. George, UT community in the Contemporary Dance Concert, hosted by St. George Dance Company.  I am excited to be premiering my (finally) complete suite of dances to Nina Simone's music, Journey On.  This suite has been in progress since 2006, and I am finally ready to finish it.  St. George Dance Co. dancers Katherine Call and Chauntelle Lewis are going to bring this piece to life beautifully!  I will also present a re-staging of To the End, set on dancers from SUU.

In June I will travel to Brockport, NY to present in a conference on teaching somatics-based technique.  I will focus on the use of inter- and intrapersonal methods when teaching technique in grades 9-12.  I will also premiere a new solo at the conference.  The work, titled Combative, explores the seeming political impotency our government is experiencing.

In October I will travel to Miami, FL to present in the National Dance Education Organization annual conference.  While teaching a student in a wheelchair in my Modern I class, I realized that I needed a fundamental shift in my pedagogic filters.  I discovered some wonderful teaching tools, and I will share them at the conference.  I am even more excited that a student of mine, Heidi Powell, will be co-presenter.  A dance education major in my methods course, she assisted in the class.  I look forward to working with her to create an engaging presentation for NDEO.

Coming up?  Well, I will produce my first concert in Utah.  And a fledgling dance company is in the works.  I am feeling all this out, as it is a new endeavor.  Be on the lookout as my new company, Shifting Velocity, takes form.

Thank you for visiting my blog.  Please come again soon!