The Dance Program recently presented six undergraduates with awards celebrating ongoing achievements in the discipline.
“We are so proud to see our students rise to the challenges of being artist-scholars. We're pleased to encourage their achievements as they inspire the faculty and their peers”
Andrea E. Woods Valdés,
Director, Duke Dance Program
The Awards and Awardees:
Clay Taliaferro Dance Award
Leah Esemuede and Avery Lythcott-Haims
Recognizing the artistic and technical growth of a faculty-nominated sophomore or junior who shows the potential to become a professional dancer, teacher, or choreographer. Created in 2006, the award is named in honor of Clay Taliaferro, Professor Emeritus of Dance at Duke University.
Dance Project Award
Leah Esemuede and Alexa Robertson
The Dance Project Award is a competitive award presented annually to help defray expenses for dance studies, creative projects or research.
Dance Writing Award
Kamryn Stafford and Jeffrey Tan
The annual competitive award is presented to an undergraduate, or undergraduates, who has written a paper demonstrating excellence in dance writing and has proven his or her ability to translate the moving text to the written word.
Julia Wray Memorial Dance Award
Claudia Chapman
Faculty-nominated award celebrating a senior, or seniors, who has shown outstanding leadership in the Dance Program. It was established to celebrate the memory of Julia Wray, who was a tireless leader and passionate protagonist for dance at Duke and throughout North Carolina.
Claudia Chapman (B.S. Electrical Computer Engineering and Computer Science; minor Dance ’22)
“Walking into the Rubenstein Arts building at 9:45am with a coffee in hand and my pointe shoes in my backpack quickly became a daily ritual for me. That morning ballet class in the Cube was a centering activity for me in the hectic world that is Duke engineering—and it can be lonely at times, being infected by the bug that is an intense passion for dance. But being surrounded by faculty who went above and beyond their responsibilities as professors to be mentors and students who shared my aspirations made the dance community of the only places within Duke I felt truly understood. Winning this award is an honor as it makes me feel as though I might have been able to give back to the program even a fraction of what they were able to give me.”
Career goals: Upon graduating, I’ll be working at Cerberus Capital Management. While I’m still unsure of my long term goals, I am confident that I’m not done dancing. You will definitely see me on stage again.
Leah Esemuede (B.A. Dance and Psychology)
The Dance Project Award will help fund costs for Leah to attend the O28 Summer Intensive ‘22 at the Orsolina Art Foundation in the Monferrato Astigiano region in Italy. Orsolina 28 is a school that merges the study of dance with the importance of one’s overall well-being to cultivate artists who are in tune with themselves and can relate their movement to the world around them.
“This is my first year on Duke’s campus. I came to this institution very unsure of my place here and worried about how I would perform both academically and artistically. Having a faculty member recognize my growth and potential through this award has felt very comforting and reassuring. To me, winning the Clay Taliaferro Award is a reminder that I am right where I am supposed to be and am following the right path.”
Avery Lythcott-Haims (B.A. Dance and Cultural Anthropology ‘23)
“I think being a professional dancer has always felt like a bit of a pipe dream that I only sheepishly allow myself to hold on to. To learn that the faculty I so admire and respect can see professional dancing in my future is an incredible motivation. The generous support from the department also gives me the means to pursue more training and experience. Winning this award feels like an invitation to keep moving toward that dream.”
Career goals: I want to work in performance. While I'm not sure what role I want to be in– performing dance, music, theater; teaching dance; or working in production– I hope to be around performance for the rest of my life.
Alexa Robertson (B.S Biology; Minor Dance and Chemistry ’22)
The Dance Project Award will help fund her application to join SAG-AFTRA (the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists). With the membership, she will be able to represent the Duke Dance Program within the professional dance industry, apply the knowledge acquired through the completion of her dance minor, as well as continue her research completed in academic courses regarding trends of hypersexualization of female performers and encodation of gender identity through movement in pop culture representations through personal experiences.
Career goals: I plan to move to Los Angeles to pursue dancing and acting professionally and full-time. I plan to spend several gap years pursuing these artistic ventures before eventually matriculating to medical school. In regards to my career in medicine, I aspire to work in the field of pediatrics, ideally surgery or oncology.
Kamryn Stafford (B.A. Dance and B.S. Global Health ’23) received the Dance Writing Award for the Urban Bush Women performance Hair and Other Stories. In this writing, Kamryn analyzed the Bush Women’s performance as a chance to internalize these stories and address social discrimination and identify within society as it relates to Black women in America.
“Winning this award pushes me to advocate for dance in academia. As a dance major, I can see the social discrimination around dance and hope to see this connotation around dance studies fade as we continue to move dance towards an interdisciplinary study.”
Career goals: After graduation, I plan to gain clinical experience where I wish to combine my passions of medicine and the arts prior to applying to P.A. school.
Jeffery Tan (B.S. Biology; minor Computational Biology) received the Dance Writing Award for a performance analysis of the Urban Bush Women performance Hair and Other Stories that was written for Dance 318.
“Coming into the class, I was not much of a dancer and didn’t know how to express on paper the way the body moved. At first, I found writing about the moving body difficult because it was hard for me to find the right words and phrases to describe the movements I witnessed. Winning this award means a lot, as it reinforces that I’ve improved greatly in being able to describe complex visual scenes in writing—thanks to the help of Professor Wilbur and my classmates.”
Career goals: My immediate goals are to attend medical school or graduate school. For a career, I’m not sure if I would prefer going into medicine, research in academia or industry, but I know I want to do something related to human health.