Recent Prin Grads Who Have Danced Professionally

This was an article released in the Principia Alumni Dance newsletter, Back at the Barre (Issue #4 - 6/14/10), written by guest writer Katie Ward Beim-Esche (C'11).

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Imagine this: a young member of the New England Patriots decides that he's had enough of professional football, and enrolls at a tiny liberal arts college in the Midwest.

Sound implausible?  Replace the cleats and helmet for toe shoes and a tutu, switch the Patriots with The Oregon Ballet Theatre, and you've just met Principia sophomore Kanoe Wagner.  Double it, and use The Dayton Contemporary Dance Company: now you know freshman Rachel Gibbens.

Let's say it's the other way around, and a Prin football player is drafted by the Patriots.  Now you know alumni Erin Swinney King (C'07), Kelly O'Connor (C'06), and Brittany Maxwell Hopkins (C'02) (right).

King now dances with the St. Louis Ballet and teaches at the St. Louis Ballet School. O'Connor is a semi-professional dancer with renowned choreographer Cecil Slaughter's Slaughter Project in St. Louis.  Hopkins teaches dance at a private prep school in Utah as well as at the Boulder Jazz Dance Workshop summer intensive.  She was also a semi-finalist on the popular TV show "So You Think You Can Dance."

Their success stories are in good company, as Principia's dance program has both welcomed professional dancers and created them as long as it has existed.  Under Dance professor Hilary Harper-Wilcoxen's tutelage, a growing number of recent student dancers have moved successfully into professional dance - but not because that's the program's goal.

"I don't train dancers to be professional dancers," says Harper-Wilcoxen matter-of-factly.  "I don't have that capability.  It's a very unique function, and it really is not my job.  I get a very tiny few dancers who are nurtured and encouraged to keep that training going ... so they don't retrograde."

"I don't make them dancers," she adds.  "That part of them just comes out."

That part seems to be coming out all over the place.  Recent graduate Justin Hughes (C'08), is now training at the Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet, and recently played the Nutcracker Prince.  Former Principia dancer Yelena Konetchy (shown with Hughes at left), who trained pre-professionally at Maine's Bossov Ballet Theatre before dancing at both the Illinois Ballet and the Charleston Ballet Theatre, will teach ballet at The Dance Institute in June in Austin, Texas.

The Center for Creative Arts (COCA), St. Louis's largest metropolitan arts institution, has seen a steady flow of Principia dancers as both students and teachers. Mimi McDonald, a frequent Winter Dance Production guest choreographer and teacher, teaches at COCA regularly. Kirsta Paul (C'01), a former participant of the Slaughter Project, also taught dance there, as did Marjorie Woodbury (C'08).  Woodbury (C'08) is now with the Atrek Dance Collective, a St. Louis contemporary and modern dance company.

So what is it about Principia's dance program that creates such a thriving cast of professional dancers, past and present?

It's the mental atmosphere, say Harper-Wilcoxen and Wagner.  The dance program at Principia is radically different from other colleges and professional companies.  Instead of dancing 20 to 30 hours a week, dancers take class for three hours each week - if they want to.

Harper-Wilcoxen, a former professional ballerina, describes the conflict between her "dancer mind," which expects dancers to train all the time, and her Principia educator mind, which understands that student dancers are fulltime students first. Accordingly, the eight-week span of rehearsals for Principia's annual Winter Dance Production only requires two hours of rehearsal per week for each dance; yet every year it is a stellar, multifaceted, and vibrant affair. 

At right, a rehearsal for Winter Dance Production 2009

So what is the effect of having former professionals in the dance program? Harper-Wilcoxen's eyes light up at the question.

"It brings the whole [program] up," she responds instantly, adding that it enriches the experiences of students in the classes:  "For other people to watch them ... is a wonderful thing," she explains.  "Very inspiring, I think."

Wagner, a soft spoken redhead who says she treats dance like a second major, came to Principia after spending a gap year dancing with the Oregon Ballet Theater.  Though her teachers said that she only needed one more year of training before she could audition for big name companies, Wagner felt strongly that she needed to take time off and go back to school.

Her living situation had turned sour in Portland, she said, and she no longer enjoyed the pre-professional dance world.  "It kind of seemed insane to continue."

 Yet when she arrived at Principia in the fall, "I was ready to start again," she says.  It was a "huge mental shift" to be a dancer with only three hours of class per week instead of her standard 21 hours, but both she and Harper-Wilcoxen report that her improvement has been more marked than when she danced fulltime in Portland. Now, her goal is to dance professionally after graduation.

 "I will start with whoever will take me," she laughs.  Though she acknowledges a need for more training as well as a general ineligibility for schools associated with big companies, Wagner guesses that a small regional company would be open to taking her on despite her on-again, off-again history with professional dance.

"From there," she explains, "I would try for a company that would accept you without having a traineeship or an apprenticeship, and from there work my way up to a company that has a more diverse repertoire or a more intellectually stimulating repertoire."

It's pretty heady stuff for an Art History major at a college with no Dance major.  But if there's anyone who can do it, it's Wagner.  She maintains a 4.0, serves on the Joe McNabb house board, and gives her heart and soul to the dance program.  This last winter, she performed in five dances.  The usual maximum is four.

"The longer I danced, the happier I got, and the easier it got," Wagner says passionately.  "I felt so alive - it was amazing."

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At the time of writing, Katie Ward Beim-Esche was a senior Mass Communication major at Principia College.  A veteran of two Winter Dance Productions, she was the Co-Editor of The Principia Pilot, the student newspaper, the year before.  The previous fall, she had also been an intern for the Christian Science Monitor.  She is currently living in San Francisco with her husband, Andy Beim-Esche.