2023 Fall Dance Concert

David Dorfman Dance Rehearsal Assistant – Nik Owens
SDC Rehearsal Assistants – Layla El-Khoury and Madison Kotyra

This piece is an excerpt from our collaborative project. We plan to continue our process throughout the spring and then perform our final product.

The beautiful white rhino species, native to the country of South Africa, is considered to be critically endangered. Wildlife experts in the area believe that these magnificent creatures have only a decade remaining on this Earth. Poachers, killers, have hunted the animals to this point, all for possession of their horns. Old wives’ tales say the horns can heal sickness, improve luck, and increase sexual performance. ProTrack, a non-profit, private military operation in Hoedspruit, tracks down active poachers and places them behind bars. Please consider checking out their social media platforms, as well as donating to their cause. Be a part of the change. Stop the madness.

“Breaking. You may be breaking….and…..the things that are causing you to break…didn’t…start….with….you… Nevertheless, the breaking is revealing the magnificent wonder that is you. Your very existence is turning darkness into light on this earth. Your presence is more stunning than perfection itself. Shame. It has no place near your name. Give it no power, no voice, no authority in your mind, heart, or being. You are purposed and fashioned for good things. You are the light that never dies. BREAK into your glory.”

Bre Forbes

Special thanks to Yashdeep Malhotra, Christa Oliver, and Francine E. Ott for your contributions to the dance community and continuous support throughout the making of this piece!

Through my own journey with grief and loss after suicide, this piece is dedicated to Hannah. If you or anyone you know is struggling, help is available. Call 988 to get in contact with the suicide and crisis lifeline.

Why is everything made of plastic?

Plastics are so widespread in our natural environment that microplastics are present everywhere, including some of the most pristine areas on earth. The trash and plastic that accumulates on our streets, sidewalks and ditches from people littering, trash blowing out of trucks, overflowing from outdoor trash cans, doesn’t magically disappear. I wish more people realized that there is no “away”. When people say to throw something away, the trash stays right here on our planet. Every piece of plastic that has ever been thrown “away” is still here on Earth. Just because you no longer can see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t still here.

Most marine debris is plastic that comes from mismanaged waste, fishing gear, and the manufacturing of products. It’s hard for me to accept that 13 million metric tons of plastics enter our oceans every year. Most of that plastic comes from litter. When it rains, that litter is washed into storm drains that flow directly into streams, and from there only a small amount of the trash is deposited onto floodplains but the rest is carried downstream to the coast where it floats out to sea. 

Do people realize that 92% of the litter that washes into creeks that drain into the Neuse River is plastic? Most of the litter comes from urban streams. Even from the plastic that is disposed, only 8% is recycled in the US while 77% ends up in landfills. So why don’t companies change their packaging to be more eco-friendly so we are able to recycle more?

Climate change and plastic waste work together in a positive feedback loop, moving marine ecosystems further away from stability. Expansion of Industrialization increases plastic production and through improper disposal of waste, runoff and illegal dumpings. The waste makes its way to the water. Larger pieces of plastic, known as macroplastics, entangle and suffocate organisms. Over time the larger pieces break down into microplastics which is anything less than the width of a pencil eraser. These are the hardest plastics to target the prevention of. They leach toxins and chemicals and are often mistaken for food and ingested by organisms. This leads to biomagnification of plastics where the food chain experiences a build up of toxins through consumption eventually reaching humans. We don’t even fully understand the toxic effects of microplastics in organisms as well as in us. Some of the chemicals associated with plastics have been found to affect hormone production, insulin secretion, and cause cardiovascular disease among other health effects. When animals we consume have plastics in their stomach, those plastics end up in us. Without governments and industries prioritizing preventative measures, all ecosystems continue to be a risk for further damage.

If everything is made of single use plastic and there is no easily available alternative then what are we supposed to do? It’s not our fault. I know there’s definitely things each of us can do to reduce plastic waste like not using single-use plastic, but it feels like it’s something out of my control and something so insurmountable that it can’t be tackled as an individual because we are surrounded by single-use plastics all the time. It makes me feel so powerless as an individual.

This piece is inspired by my advisor, Dr. Barbara Doll, and her research on plastics and microplastics in the Neuse River Basin. I hope this piece makes people think about the plastics we use, how they’re disposed of and what we can do to create and support a more environmentally friendly lifestyle.

Beasley holds a B.A. in Studio Art from the College of Charleston and an M.F.A. in Choreography from the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She brings her experiences as an artist, choreographer, and performer in the field to her teaching. Beasley has had the good fortune of performing across the country for many influential choreographers, including John Gamble, Susan Haines, Gerri Houlihan, BJ Sullivan, Sean Sullivan, Talani Torres, and Jan Van Dyke. Her own work has been performed at several universities, the North Carolina Dance Festival, UNC School of the Arts, Art-o-Matic in Washington, DC, and through Triskelion Art’s Waxworks and the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, NY. Beasley’s research in dance-making and education merges her studies and considers how visual art-making and processes intersect with dance-making, training, and performance. Inspired by her Yoga practice and teaching, her research in each classroom looks at how mindfulness intersects with learning, moving, and self-agency. Before joining the faculty at North Carolina State University, she was on faculty at Elon University, UNC Greensboro, Wake Forest University, and the UNC School of the Arts’ Summer Intensive.

Artistic Director and Founder of David Dorfman Dance (1987), David Dorfman has been a Professor of Dance at Connecticut College since 2004. Dorfman received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 to continue his research and choreography in the topics of power and powerlessness, including activism, dissidence, and underground movements. DD has been honored with four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, three New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships, an American Choreographer’s Award, the first Paul Taylor Fellowship from The Yard, and a New York Dance & Performance “Bessie” Award. David was a 2019 United States Artists Fellow in Dance. His work has been commissioned widely in the U.S. and in Europe, by Dancing Wheels (Cleveland), AXIS Dance Company (Oakland), and Bedlam Dance Company (London). 

His forays into theater include choreography for the Tony Award-winning play, Indecent, by Paula Vogel and Rebecca Taichman, for which DD received a Lucille Lortel Award and Chita Rivera Nomination for best choreography for the play’s Off-Broadway run. David traveled to London in March 2020 to set choreography for Indecent’s UK premiere at the Menier Chocolate Factory. In addition, David has contributed his choreography for the upcoming Whisper House, a new musical by Duncan Sheik and Kyle Jarrow, Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People at Yale Rep; Our Town, a co-production of Deaf West and Pasadena Playhouse; Assassins at Yale Rep; and the original musical Green Violin at the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia, for which he won a 2003 Barrymore Award for best choreography. 

Dorfman tours an evening of solos and duets, Live Sax Acts, with dear friend and collaborator Dan Froot, most recently in New York City and at the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe.  As a performer, he toured internationally with Kei Takei’s Moving Earth and Susan Marshall & Co. DD hails from Chicago and holds a BS in Business Administration from Washington University in St. Louis (1977). He appeared on several episodes of A Chance to Dance, a reality show on OvationTV starring Dorfman’s pals, the BalletBoyz who invited David Dorfman Dance to make a three minute video for RandomAct/Channel 4UK. We Don’t Own a Dog came out of that invitation—click here to watch it.

DD continually thanks Martha Myers and the late Daniel Nagrin, for being his dance mom and dad; his late parents, Oscar and Jeanette, for inspiring him to dance to heal and instilling the importance of a good joke; and his in-house “family project”, Lisa and Samson, for sharing with him the practice of unconditional love.

Brianna Forbes (MFA) is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Performing Arts & Technology. She is passionate about Restorative Justice, Community enrichment, and Street Dance. Prior to joining NC State, she taught K-12 Public School Dance, along with guest choreographing and serving as faculty within Elon University’s Department of Performing Arts.

Forbes currently serves as the National Board Advisor of Delta Chi Xi Honorary Dance Fraternity Inc. and is a proud dancer of Dance Now Cry Later. Currently, through her Restorative Justice Project, Forbes20Tour, she mentors collegiate dancers across the United States and produces/facilitates community performances and workshops for a positive change. She has performed in various Street Dance festivals such as “We Are Hip Hop” in Charlotte, NC. In addition, she has choreographed and performed various House Dance-based pieces during her Dance Project Artist Residency in Greensboro, NC.

Forbes is an Alumna of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), where she received a Master of Fine Arts in Choreography along with her K-12 teaching licensure. She enjoys teaching and choreographing for students of all ages and hopes to continue building and restoring communities through arts activism.

Tara Z. Mullins is an Associate Teaching Professor in the department, where she choreographs for the academic companies, teaches courses, facilitates the Master Class Series, and creates interdisciplinary projects.  She recently founded the Lunchbox Series, a virtual lunchtime conversation series that uses dance as a springboard to delve into pertinent topics such as Arts and Public Health and the intersection of STEM with dance.

While at NC State, Tara produced Operation Breadbasket, a mixed-media modern dance honoring the civil rights movement, which was featured on WUNC’s The State of Things.

She also created Against the Railing, a digital platform and mixed media dance piece that tells the immigration stories of the NC State community. Her screendance Gull, in collaboration with renowned filmmaker Doug Kass, was screened at 16 international film festivals. Before working at NC State, Tara developed the education and service-based Z Mullins Dance Company. The company founded and facilitated such events as the Virginia Dance Symposium, which brought together high school dancers and professors from dance programs, and the Summer Dance Intensive, a ten-day program for high school and college dancers. She also planned and directed many community projects, such as Fitness, Food and FUN, a nutrition and fitness program for fifth-grade girls, and the Big Gig, a free youth arts festival in Miami. Tara has a B.A. in dance from James Madison University and an M.F.A. in dance from Arizona State University, where she received the Faculty Women’s Association Distinguished Master Degree Candidate Award for her work developing arts programs for homeless youth, as well as the inaugural Herberger College of Fine Arts Fellowship.

Christa Oliver is an Associate Teaching Professor in the department and the Director of the Panoramic Dance Project. Prior to joining NC State, she taught for eleven years in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Texas State University.

Christa is an educator, dance activist, performer, and choreographer. She holds a Master of the Arts degree in Dance Performance and a Professional Diploma in Dance Studies from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (England). She is also a Mellon Fellow in the School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard University. Throughout her career, Christa has collaborated with renowned choreographers such as Donald McKayle, Valerie Preston-Dunlop, Rafael Bonachela, Donald Byrd, Rennie Harris, Lula Washington, Victor Quijada, Christopher Huggins, Willi Dorner, Miguel Periera, Robin Lewis, and Dominique Kelly. She has performed professionally in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Kosovo, Mexico, and Amsterdam and was the dance captain on the national tour of The Color Purple. She has also showcased her acting and dancing skills on the big screen in Hollywood films such as Avatar and Crazy on the Outside.

Nik Owens began his movement experience as a competitive gymnast for 15 years and began his dance training in his senior year of high school and continued at Wesleyan University, where he received a BA in Dance and a certificate in Environmental Studies. He has worked with Nicholas Leichter, Tania Isaac, and Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion and has performed works by The Dance Exchange, Raja Kelly/The Feath3r Theory, Bryn Cohn and Artists, Helen Simoneau Danse, The Bang Group, Kayla Farrish- Decent Structures Arts, Dual Rivet, 10 Hairy Legs and others. He has worked on several duet projects and has been commissioned to create works at Rivertown Dance Academy in New York and The Wooden Floor (under David Dorfman Dance) in California. He currently collaborates and performs with Tiffany Mills Company, Kyle Marshall Choreography, and David Dorfman Dance. In 2021 he began working on a solo of his own creation called The Right Kind and plans to continue that project’s choreographic journey.