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!