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| Music Department in the News | |
| Courses 2011-2012 |
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Summer Fellowship and Composition Prize Applications are DUE APRIL 9, 2012.
Gamelan rehearsals every Thursday 7-8:30 Everyone is welcome!
New Dance Director
PRACTICE ROOMS REOPEN!
The new practice rooms are open! The extended schedule, beginnning NOVEMBER 1 is:
8:30 am - 11:00 pm MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY
10:00 am - 10:00 pm SATURDAY and SUNDAY
Thursdays 6:30-8:30
Gamelan Si Betty is a community gamelan ensemble at Harvard University, directed by Jody Diamond, Artist in Residence Harvard University Music Department. Everyone is invited to join (no previous experience required), and musicians and composers are especially encouraged. Rehearsals: Thursdays from 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Hilles/SOCH, Lower Main floor
on the Quad at Garden & Shepard,
Cambridge, Massachusetts for information on playing or composing contact diamond2[@]fas.harvard.edu http://www.gamelan.org/harvard/index.html
JILL JOHNSON APPOINTED DANCE DIRECTOR AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 6, 2011
CONTACT: Jack Megan, megan@fas.harvard.edu
Thomas Lee, lee16@fas.harvard.edu 617.495.8676
Graduate of Canada’s National Ballet School and former principal dancer of Frankfurt Ballet to lead program of credit courses and co-curricular instruction
(Cambridge, MA)—The Office for the Arts at Harvard (OFA) and Harvard University Music Department are pleased to announce the appointment of Jill Johnson as Director of the OFA Dance Program and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Music. Johnson, a 23-year veteran of the dance field as a performer, choreographer, educator and producer, succeeds Elizabeth Weil Bergmann, who retired from the post after eleven years of service. She assumes her duties at Harvard beginning July 1, 2011
.“We are thrilled with the appointment of Jill Johnson as Harvard’s new dance director,” said Jack Megan, Director of the Office for the Arts and Co-Chair of the Dance Director Search Committee.“ Jill has distinguished herself as a performer on international stages, as a re-stager of William Forsythe’s works, as an innovative choreographer and as a teacher who truly inspires and draws out the best from her students. Her energy and vision for dance at Harvard has excited all who have met her, and we can hardly wait to begin the next phase of Harvard dance under her leadership.”
"Jill Johnson's inspiring vision of dance as a medium for boundary-crossing cooperation among disciplines and art forms—and as a model of communication and collaboration in general—promises to bring new energy to dance at Harvard,” said Anne C. Shreffler, James Edward Ditson Professor of Music and Chair of the Department of Music, and Co-Chair of the Dance Director Search Committee. “We especially welcome Jill's plans to forge stronger connections between the Dance Program and the Department of Music.”
Johnson’s appointment comes after significant growth for the OFA Dance Program, which has a rich history of connecting students to dance pioneers. In recent years under the direction of Elizabeth Bergmann, the Dance Program has been instrumental in the development of Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) courses in dance history, choreography, technique, and repertory, offered through the Committee on Dramatic Arts. Co-curricular instruction of all dance genres is offered at beginner to advanced levels, with approximately 400 students enrolling in classes each semester. Programming also includes artist residencies and master classes, as well as a dance showcase held twice annually. In all, the program supports the activities of twenty-five undergraduate dance troupes involving 800 students.
“I am thrilled that Jill Johnson will be leading the Dance Program at Harvard and carrying forward the great work of my mentor, Elizabeth Bergmann,” added Mary Cochran, Chair and Artistic Director of the Department of Dance at Barnard College (Columbia University), former dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company and a member of the Search Committee. “Ms. Johnson is a creative force and a force for good. Her international experience and reputation as a consummate artist will open new doors for innovative, multi-disciplinary collaborations at Harvard.”
Formerly on the faculties of Princeton University, Barnard College at Columbia University, and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Jill Johnson is a graduate of Canada’s National Ballet School. She was a dance soloist with the National Ballet of Canada and a principal dancer in choreographer William Forsythe’s company Frankfurt Ballet for ten years. For the past two decades she has staged Forsythe’s work worldwide, including productions at Paris Opera Ballet, Norwegian National Ballet, Batsheva Dance Company in Israel, La Scala, the National Ballet of Canada, American Ballet Theater and Boston Ballet. Currently she is working with Mikhail Baryshnikov and William Forsythe on a solo that Forsythe is creating for Baryshnikov.Johnson has also served as an adjunct faculty member at The Juilliard School, The Joffrey Ballet School, and Movement Invention Project where she has been Choreographer-In-Residence, and has taught regularly at Yale University, The Alvin Ailey School, and Ohio State University where she recently collaborated on the award-winning web-based project Synchronous Objects.
Her recent Artist-In-Residency posts include Forsythe master workshops at The Baryshnikov Arts Center in 2009-10, with Morphoses dance company in September 2010, Jacksonville University’s MFA Dance Program in July 2010, and The New School University where she was commissioned to make an original work entitled 27 for 17 in May of 2009.Johnson’s other recent choreographic commissions are Room/Room for NYU in spring 2009; As Yet Unnamed, for the Movement Invention Project Collective in New York City in July 2010; Folding Articulation for Princeton University, February, 2011; Waterline for Barnard College at Columbia University,and Solo for Jeff at The Juilliard School, May 2011. The Copier, commissioned by Cedar Lake D ance C ompany, received honorable mention in Time Out New York’s Best in Dance in New York in 2009 and was hailed by Dance.com as a work that “breaks the ballet mold and integrates stellar technique with innovative elements.”
Johnson’s administrative and leadership experience includes directing the William Forsythe program at the Dance Apprenticeship Network Across Europe Program through the Palucca University in Dresden, Germany, as well as running her own freelance dance production company for eleven years. In addition, she has designed curricula and syllabi for dance programs and departments at institutions of higher education including New York University, Princeton University, Barnard College, The Ailey School, The New School University and The Juilliard School.
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