Now in its sixth year, the annual Ohio 5 Dance Conference returned to Oberlin last Saturday for the first time since its inception. The event, which 78 people attended, brought together dance students and faculty from the Five Colleges of Ohio, a consortium of liberal arts schools that includes Kenyon College, Denison University, Ohio Wesleyan University, and The College of Wooster. The conference has proven to be an invaluable opportunity for faculty and staff to share their knowledge and form a...

In my junior year of high school, my lifelong dance teacher told me that she hoped there was a strong dance program wherever I chose to go to college, because she was sure I would miss it. I nodded politely, sure she was wrong. During my college search, I barely considered dance — and yet, I spent much of my first semester at Oberlin rapturously watching dance, writing about dance, and fangirling over the pieces being created here and the amazing dancers doing the creating. When I began to...

Chandler Browne’s senior capstone The Tap Project is a documentary play about the oral history of tap dancing, especially in Black and American contexts. A part of the Posse Foundation’s “Posse 8” Program — outstanding, diverse high school students recruited to study at Oberlin — Browne’s one-woman show is mentored and directed by Professor of Africana Studies and Chair of Theater Caroline Jackson-Smith. “Somewhere over the last two years, [Browne] decided that she would like to build t...

It’s hard to believe that Oberlin’s Student Dance Showcase first appeared only six years ago, given the campus staple it has since become. Now one of the most well-attended student dance performances each semester, the showcase — which will present its spring 2018 iteration this weekend — is a space for student dance groups of any and every type to spotlight their hard work, talent, and enthusiastic energy for friends, family, and other students and faculty. Previous to the 2012 creation of Student Dance Showcase, student dancers and choreographers were limited to auditioning for Dance department-sponsored performances Spring Back and Fall Forward, which required dance faculty approval, or participation in t...