2026 Fall Faculty Dance Concert

Northampton, MA — The Smith College Department of Dance presents the 2026 Fall Faculty Dance Concert on November 19–21 at 8 p.m. in Theatre 14. The concert features restaged contemporary works by Garth Fagan, Merce Cunningham, and Trisha Brown as well as new works by Smith faculty member Rodger Blum, ballet and guest artist Alexis Robbins, tap performed by undergraduate, graduate, and professional dancers. Tickets are $5–10 and available at smitharts.ludus.com.

For the first time, the Smith Fall Faculty Dance Concert will feature three repertory projects that highlight postmodern dance legends. Merce Cunningham’s experimentation with chance methods and curiosity about new technology helped transform modern dance into postmodern dance. Later choreographers took this freedom in different directions: Garth Fagan adopted Cunningham’s clarity of the articulate body and infused it with his Jamaican heritage. Trisha Brown took Cunningham’s process as permission to invent new forms in new spaces and use improvisation extensively. The program also includes a new ballet work by Rodger Blum and a tap piece by Alexis Robbins.

Rodger Blum, professor of dance,  uses the anthology of Dolly Parton as inspiration for his contemporary ballet piece The Beautiful Lie. The dance for nine performers, highlights Parton’s earlier work with her 1999 Bluegrass album, The Grass is Blue. Blum was motivated by Parton’s recent passing and his personal history growing up in rural North Carolina. “In Parton’s big-hearted world, we are all seen, respected, and loved. Her voice, wrapped around words of joy, despair, humor, and living, reminds us all to be more like Dolly,” says Blum. 

Before coming to Smith, Rodger Blum was ballet master/soloist for the original Raleigh Dance Theatre (now Carolina Ballet) and then chair of the dance program at the Performing Arts School in Louisville, Kentucky, where he was given an excellence in teaching award from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. His choreography has been presented by various companies on the east and west coasts as well as in Belgium, Spain, Portugal and Germany.

Renowned as one of the most defining artists of her generation, whose groundbreaking vision fundamentally reshaped the landscape of contemporary dance, choreographer Trisha Brown (1936–2017) created Groove and Countermove for her company in 2000 as the final piece in her El Trilogy. Smith College dancers bring an excerpt of this work to Theatre 14, staged by original cast member Mariah Maloney with Smith faculty member Angie Hauser as rehearsal director. The dance reveals an intricate world of counterpoint, featuring music by Dave Douglas; the 10-person cast engages with frenetic energy in bold movement phrases that are at once easygoing and vitally expressive. Trisha Brown was an influential American dancer, choreographer, and visual artist who co-founded the avant-garde Judson Dance Theater in New York. A celebrated pioneer of the postmodern movement, she became the first female choreographer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991.

Carolyn Brown described Merce Cunningham’s TV rerun as “a dance in which everyone learns the same material but is free to choose spontaneously in performance what parts of it she or he wishes to perform.” Cunningham explored shifting focus on stage by having one or more people move around the stage photographing the performance, so the dancers would be aware and move with a non-fixed focus. Jasper Johns’s costume design was white or black leotards and tights, and the score was by Gordon Mumma, titled Telepos. M.F.A. graduate dance fellow, Lindsey Jones is staging the piece for the Smith College concert. Merce Cunningham (1919–2009) is widely considered one of the most important choreographers of all time. His approach to performance was groundbreaking in its ideological simplicity and physical complexity: he applied the idea that “a thing is just that thing” to choreography, embracing the notion that “if the dancer dances, everything is there.” 

Garth Fagan’s From Before, created in 1978, explores movement from “before” Western civilization through a contemporary lens. The work honors ancestry and the values passed down through generations: family, community, creativity, and the ability to innovate. Its layered rhythms and dynamic shifts reflect the essence of Africa and the Americas. The skin-fitting unitards in bold colors, and Fagan’s own, non-traditional way of moving give the piece its contemporary look. From Before gained international recognition after its 1984 filming at Dance Black America at BAM, where it received a thunderous ovation and has since remained a staple in dance archives across the U.S., Caribbean, and Africa. Neri Torres, Five College Lecturer in Dance is staging the piece for performances at Smith and UMASS Amherst. Garth Fagan (Founder and Distinguished Artistic Director Emeritus of Garth Fagan Dance) has been called “a true original,” “a genuine leader,” and “one of the great reformers of modern dance.” With over five decades of groundbreaking contributions to the art form, Mr. Fagan uses Fagan Technique™—the dance vocabulary born of Garth Fagan Dance—as the impetus for his choreography, creating acclaimed works such as Mudan 175/39, Griot New York, Prelude, From Before, and Oatka Trail. 

In I reckon there’s another way Alexis Robbins asks, “What happens energetically in our bodies when we don’t leave appropriate room for grief? Where do the emotions that we refuse to feel go?” This original tap piece with music scored by Clancy Emanuel explores these questions, as Robbins experiments with the juxtaposition of opposing dynamics, musical motifs, and movement. Unfolding layers of awareness through rhythm, reflecting on the potential for new paths, and reckoning with the pieces of ourselves that ache to be felt. The eight dancers need to listen to each other, as the piece consistently transitions in and out of unison, at times asking the dancers to play and hear several rhythms at once. Alexis Robbins (she/her) is a choreographer, performer, producer, educator, writer, and dance advocate based in New Haven, CT. Under the brand name kamrDANCE, Robbins has shown her work and performed with many musical collaborators throughout the Northeast, and created five dance films that have been screened across the U.S. and internationally.

The Fall Faculty Dance Concert is made possible in part by the Sharonjean Moser Leeds Endowment, a fund created by Sharonjean ’67 and Richard Leeds for the Smith College Department of Dance, and a gift from the Traub family in memory of Lee Laufer Traub ’47.