ISU wins an invitation to the American College Dance Festival National Conference

Idaho State University has won an invitation to the American College Dance Festival National Conference to present a work that won accolades at the Northwest Regional Conference.

Rosa Vissers, visiting aisstant professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance, presented her work “Temporarily Out of Order” at the regional conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, in March. The conference adjudicators selected Vissers' piece from a contingency of 65 different works being presented at the conference to be performed in the Gala Concert, the culminating event of the conference that featured nine exemplary works from the 28 colleges and universities that attended. Vissers states that she feels honored to have her work selected out of such an amazing field of participants and is thrilled to provide this opportunity for students.

Vissers work was then selected from the Gala concert to represent the Northwest Region at the National Festival in June 2008. The National Festival “showcases dances selected by the adjudicators from each of the regional conferences based on their outstanding artistic excellence and merit. The primary objective of the National Festival is to highlight, on the national level, the outstanding quality of choreography and performance that is being created on college and university campuses. The National Festival provides this venue in three gala performances, presenting works from approximately 30 colleges and universities."

Excerpts from the work can be viewed by following this link: http://www.rosavissers.com/video/webimove.mov. The goal at hand now is to raise the funds to send Vissers and her cast to the New York conference.

Dance faculty member Molly Jorgensen, who also presented her work “Crossing Spaces” at the conference remarks that it is truly an achievement for ISU given that most of the Universities attending the conference offer major and graduate programs in dance while the program at ISU functions at the minor level. Student works are also presented at the conference.  Victor Gomez and Omar Raudez presented their duet entitled “Their Things and Our Things”. A contingency of 14 students attended the conference along with the three dance faculty members.

“This certainly speaks to the quality of Ms. Vissers work, the dedication of our students and faculty, and to the potential of our program to progress to a dance major at ISU," stated Lauralee Zimmerly, iISU interim director of dance.