50 Years and Counting
Marking its 50th installment this spring, this year’s signature showcase dance concert at Hope not only is an occasion but is providing one. It’s the centerpiece of a year-long celebration that began with a groundbreaking and will culminate in a dedication, all an opportunity to reflect on the rich history as well as the bright present and future of a department that has earned — and it is not exaggeration to say this — an international reputation for excellence.
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Dance department founder Maxine DeBruyn joins the faculty in 1965 and creates and teaches Hope’s first dance class, in modern dance; 17 students enroll. Even as she continued to build the college’s program across the next four-plus decades, DeBruyn went on to become a nationally and internationally recognized leader in dance education. She retired in 2006 as the Dorothy Wiley DeLong Professor Emerita of Dance, although she remained active in the department. She died at age 83 on Dec. 9, 2020; a Celebration of Life was held on campus in her honor the following September.
The college’s dance program begins with a small studio in Durfee Hall (the Juliana Room) and a room in the basement of the DeWitt Center. The Dow Health and Physical Education Center opens in 1978, providing the college’s first purpose-built dance studio as well as faculty offices for the department.
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With the department’s growth and evolving national standards for instruction, the Wesselink Tap Studio opens in the DeVos Fieldhouse during the 2021-22 school year, and the college breaks ground this past Aug. 18 for the Heeringa Dance Wing being added to the DeWitt Center with completion scheduled for the fall of 2024. Next up will be an extensive renovation of the Dow Center to provide even more space.
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The dance program becomes a full academic department in 1974, offering a dance minor. Hope begins offering a dance major in 1984. Today, the department offers a dance major with emphases in performance and choreography, a dance dual major, and minors in dance and in dance pedagogy. Coursework is a combination of theory and technique, including ballet, Hip Hop, jazz, modern and tap. The department includes seven full-time faculty and staff, as well as a variety of part-time faculty, adjunct and guest faculty.
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Dance 1, featuring faculty choreography and student dancers, is held in the DeWitt Center main theatre on March 21-22, 1975. Performance opportunities for students today include not only the showcase concert, but also concerts by two companies affiliated with the department, H2 Dance Co. (a pre-professional repertory company) and Strike Time (presenting dance for elementary schools throughout Michigan), as well as fall and spring concerts of student-choreographed work. Hope College has six dance clubs: Ballet Movement Lab, Tap Club, Dance Club/Dutch Dance Team, Swing Dance Club, Rumba Latina/Latin X Dance Club, and For His Glory (Sacred Dance) Club.
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Hope becomes accredited by the National Association of Schools of Dance in 1982. Hope also holds national accreditation in art, music and theatre, the first private liberal arts college to have achieved the distinction.
The Cecchetti Council of America relocates its annual International Summer School to Hope in 1995, with the participants annually including about 250 dance students ages 11-18 from across the United States, instructors, counselors and artists. This coming July, the college will also host the Cecchetti International Classical Ballet Competition, held every three years in various countries around the world.
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The Department of Dance is one of only 250 arts programs of all types nationwide — among them not only dance, but also drama, music and creative writing — highlighted in the 2005 book Creative Colleges: A Guide for Student Actors, Artists, Dancers, Musicians and Writers. (The college’s program in creative writing is also featured.)
The department’s H2 Dance Company, featuring student dancers led by co-artistic directors Matthew Farmer ’04 and Crystal Frazier, is selected to travel to Scotland to participate in the August 2016 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world.
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The global COVID-19 pandemic presents a challenge but not an obstacle for Dance 47 in 2021. With no in-person audience an option, the department develops the concert as a pair of multi-camera, professional-quality films to be shown online on April 9 and 10 that year, using the process of producing them as an additional learning experience. (Titled Reset, they continue to be available on the college’s YouTube channel.)
Chicago Tap Theatre presents the college with its 2023 Inspiration Award on Feb. 19 during the company’s 20th-anniversary gala for the department’s “legacy of continued support and advancement for the art of tap dance in America.”
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Today, more than 250 students are enrolled in the department’s courses in any given semester, including approximately 75 who have declared majors or minors. Across the decades, numerous alumni have made — and continue to make — their career in dance as dancers, choreographers, company directors or dance educators. Many have also double-majored, combining dance with programs ranging from chemistry, to economics and business, to engineering, to French, to psychology, carving out career paths that blend their chosen fields.
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Scheduled for Feb. 9-10 and 15-17, Dance 50 will feature additional activities including an alumni reunion in conjunction with the Feb. 17 performance and tours of the in-progress Heeringa Dance Wing. Members of the Hope family who are interested in learning more about the concert or the 2023-24 celebration of the Department of Dance, or who are interested in supporting the facilities’ enhancements, can find additional information online.
