Three generations of dancers – a teacher, her students and their students – from Sweet Briar College and Amherst County are part of a group bound for the Netherlands to participate in the 10th Dance and the Child International Conference July 2-8 at The Hague.
SBC dance professor Ella Magruder and daughter Mia perform together. Photo by Andrew Wilds. More photosTwo children from the Sweet Briar College after-school dance program, Bryce Patton and Margot Pleasants, along with Amherst County High School graduate Mia Magruder, three SBC alumnae and Ella Magruder, SBC professor and director of the College’s teacher training program in dance, will perform at the conference. Children and adult performers and delegates will represent more than 20 nations ranging from Jamaica to Croatia.
An invitation to perform at the conference is an honor that requires submitting a videotape of each dance for review by a panel of judges. Selections are based on quality of dance and relevance to the conference theme, “Coloring Senses: Moving, Creating, Observing; Three Dimensions of the Dancing Child.”
After months of preparations, seeing her dance students move on in their careers and seeing her own daughter Mia off to college, Ella Magruder’s excitement about the trip is plain.
“I can’t believe it’s actually happening,” she said.
In all, 15 Sweet Briar and local community members will make the trip, which is made possible in part by grants from Sweet Briar College.
Pleasants, an 11-year-old student at Amherst County Middle School, is the daughter of Sheila and Craig Pleasants of Amherst. She will perform “Journey,” a solo that she choreographed herself in the SBC youth dance company class last year. Patton, 8, a student at Amherst Elementary School, is the daughter of Sherry and Jeff Patton of Amherst. The girls will be two of seven performers in “To the Winds” choreographed by Ella Magruder.
Amherst native Samantha Angus is another dancer. A graduate student in dance at Sam Houston State University in Texas, Angus danced and taught for Terrific Time studio in Amherst for many years. She graduated in 2005 from Sweet Briar with the College’s new Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a major in dance and a minor in art history.
Also performing in “To the Winds” are Jan Jennings ’05, now a graduate student in dance at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., and Casey Poore ’05 of Amelia, Va. Poore teaches history at Kenston Forest School and dance in studios in Richmond while studying with the Richmond Ballet.
Mia and Ella Magruder round out the piece’s seven dancers. Mia, a first-year student at the University of Virginia, also is the daughter of Mark Magruder, professor of dance and director of the Sweet Briar dance program. At the daCi conference Mark Magruder will present a choreographic workshop.
Angus, Jennings and Poore taught in the Sweet Briar after-school creative dance program, which offers classes that are equal parts dance technique and choreography. The program gives children a chance to dance about things they care about and that are appropriate, Ella Magruder said.
“We guide them in how to put together theatrical dance,” she said. “Audiences are often surprised at how children can create things with so much depth.”
As for the Hague-bound Pleasants and Patton, “There’s a magic about the way they perform,” Magruder said.
Julia Pleasants, an Amherst County High School graduate and Washington and Lee University rising junior, will participate as a delegate to the conference. At ACHS she and Mia Magruder performed with the Amherechos Show Choir, and served as dance captains (directed in dance by Sweet Briar alumna Charlotte Rognmoe Gilbar ’98).
The families of Pleasants and Patton make up the remainder of the group traveling to “the land of the wooden shoe.” To honor that designation, the two girls will join 500 other young international delegates to perform a dance in blue jeans and wooden clogs in the conference’s closing ceremony on July 8.
According to its Web site,
www.daci2006.nl, daCi is a UNESCO organization that provides a “unique global forum for all who care about dance for children and youth.” It holds an international conference in different countries every three years.
Mia Magruder (from left), Bryce Patton and Samantha Angus, all of Amherst County, perform in “To the Winds,” choreographed by Sweet Briar College dance professor Ella Magruder. The group will perform the dance at the 10th Dance and the Child International Conference being held from July 2 to 8 in The Hague, Netherlands. Photo by Andrew Wilds.
