Shall we dance?

Every dance begins with a carefully choreographed step. Sometimes the music inspires the movement. Sometimes the body speaks.

The movement to create a dance program at the University had been in motion for some time, but it wasn’t until last fall that the school took its first steps. This time, it was the student body that spoke.

The result was a new dance instructor, Trish Gooley, who offered two technique classes, Modern Dance and Jazz Dance, in the fall and has added a third course on choreography for the current semester.

For the first time at the University, dance is being approached as an independent art form.

“I’ve heard people in the arts say this is the missing leg of the chair,” said Karen Ryan, associate dean for the arts, humanities and social sciences. “We’ve had drama, music, fine arts and now dance.”

In the first semester, Gooley didn’t turn anyone away. Her students — 13 in modern dance and 11 in jazz — were split between beginners and seriously trained dancers, but Gooley saw this as a benefit, not a struggle.

“For the newer dancers, it helps to see how people with more training execute the steps. For people who have more training, it helps to watch the beginners and look at movement in a new way,” she said.

This spring, Gooley received more than 70 requests from students for the courses and had to restrict enrollment to instructor permission.

The classes, said Ryan, were a response to considerable student demand and were made possible by, of all things, the new marching band. A part-time position was created for a color guard director, but to attract the most qualified person, Ryan wanted to offer a full-time gig. The College was able to create a part-time dance position to pair with the color guard director opening. Gooley fit both descriptions.

Gooley received her master’s degree in dance education at New York University and taught in public schools outside the city, including a performing arts high school in the Bronx. At U.Va. she found dancers with a lot of raw talent and a strong technical base, but she hopes to expose them to the more intellectual side of dance. Any dance program that develops, added Ryan, will be framed within the context of a liberal arts school.

It’s a credit to students that dance has survived at the University without an official program to support it, said Nicole Klett (Drama ’05). Klett is a director of the Student Council Committee for Dance, formed this year to push for the creation of a dance minor, and president of The Virginia Dance Company, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

“It speaks highly of the dancers at U.Va., who have gone through a lot of struggles to find places to rehearse, find performance spaces and find funding,” she said.

The numerous dance organizations on Grounds compete for space not only with each other, said Klett, but also with the aerobics program for mirrored rooms and with the music department for performance space in Old Cabell Hall.

Gooley hopes to be a unifying force for dance at the University and wants the formal dance classes to complement, not replace, existing dance organizations. “The goal is not to change anybody, but to make them more aware of each other and unite the dance forces on Grounds,” Gooley said. “All the energy that’s there needs to be channeled into one.”

The Arts Council granted Gooley funds to take a group of dancers to the American Collegiate Dance Festival in Buffalo, N.Y., this spring. ACDF is a noncompetitive festival that emphasizes the sharing of dance, not a ranking of programs. Participating schools exchange information on majors and minors, perform for each other and take classes in a wide variety of styles.

In the coming year, Gooley must address lingering questions about how to keep first-years involved in the dance program for four years. She will be the one to lobby for a dance studio in the planned addition to the drama building. She wants to see dance grow and match the prestige of other disciplines at the University.

These are the carefully choreographed first steps of an opening act.