Tapped In: The Bennington Blog

CONGRATSSS

And yes. Absolutely. For a year or a term. Although there are a lot of cool juniors (like Evan) who you’ll miss out on getting to meet.

Liam ‘14

I am a sophomore dance and literature student and this is my perspective on the dance department here at Bennington.

A concentration in dance at Bennington involves having a strong focus in composition. The only requirement that I know of for graduating is at last three terms in an Advanced Projects course, which means by the time you leave you will have choreographed at least three sizable dance projects. That being said there is also a strong emphasis on honing one’s own movement vocabulary through improvisation, which should be supplemented by technique classes but not overruled by them. 

The Bennington format allows for many different levels of students to enter into the dance department. Beginning courses are left open for anyone to join through the general registration lottery, while advanced courses require one or two beginning classes before entry just like the rest of campus. The dance department is one of the tightest communities at Bennington, mainly because students are always moving together in class, as well as dancing in each others projects outside of class. Also, every week the entire dance department meets Thursday night for Dance Workshop to show works-in-progress and is just another time that all the dancers get to hangout in beautiful Martha Hill, which fyi has one of the largest sprung wooden floors on the east coast. The dance studios also have amazingly soft-wooden floors and have large windows that let the sunlight pour in.

Last but not least, the faculty here are phenomenal. The core faculty: Terry Creach, Susan Sgorbati, and Dana Reitz are incredible. All teach composition and are great at pulling in visiting faculty and artists from all over the world to teach technique classes the core faculty can’t teach. Every term there tends to be at least 3-5 visiting faculty on campus as well as 1-2 MFA students. Souleymane Badolo, an MFA, is a great resource to have on campus. Not only is he a great contemporary dancer, but he also teaches two African dance classes. I recommend checking out the dance page on the college website, which has pretty good overview of the program and also has the curriculum, which is worth looking at.

Though we are tucked away here in the hills of Vermont there is always so much going on around campus dance related. This weekend Bard and Sarah Lawrence’s Dance Departments are descending upon our campus for Mini-fest. I can’t wait to dance with all of them!

Hope this helps!

- Finn

I’m a sophomore and I’ve never written anything longer than 8 pages, which I would say is the average length for lit papers, though most papers I’ve encountered across the board are 5 pagers. There are definitely dsiciplines, classes and teachers that have reputations for being more intense in that respect than others, and I’ll probably end up writing like a 40 page senior thesis, but you’re definitely not going to have a 20 pager due the second week of freshman year. If you do, you’ll still have time to drop the class.

Liam ‘14

Best: the plan process, the mountains, and the stuffing the dining hall makes on thanksgiving night.

Worst: the fact that there are such good mountains around, but I’m not around to snowboard on them for half the winter because of FWT (but FWT’s great); long lines in the d-hall on burger night; and the fact that people are constantly doing such cool stuff, and I usually miss it cause I’m writing a paper.

Good luck with your decisionsss

Liam ‘14

Latenightlakenightslatenightlakenights.

-riley

We have two official voice teachers here who have very different styles of singing and teaching. One of the instructors teaches from a more intensely classical perspective while the other does both classical and more alternative styles and techniques as well. I’ve struggled in the past with taking voice classes since my inclination is not particularly classical and there is an ornery part of me that doesn’t want to sing classically at all, but honestly that is my loss. It is important to stretch and explore a plethora of ways to sing.  The bottom line is that no matter what styles you are interested in, you learn how to breathe and how to use your body as an instrument, and that will apply to anything you sing regardless of style. If you are interested in musical theater, you will probably get to sing a few songs in that style but you will also be asked to sing songs that you maybe would not chose for yourself, and in that way you can expand your capacity as a singer in all genres. Email me if you have more questions or want to talk in depth: rileys@bennington.edu

-Riley

We don’t have organized tennis teams (or really any kind of team, except for sometimes soccer and dodgeball), but we do have a tennis court and a lot of people play! If you don’t have any of your own stuff, never fear. You can check out equipment from the rec barn for free.

- Meg

(P.S. No one ever calls it BC. Just so you know.)

I am not a drama student but I was just having a conversation with a fellow admissions intern, Jessieh and this is what she has to say about it: 

” One of the great things about Bennington is that you aren’t able to particularly able to distinguish between students who study drama and students who study psychology and students who study math because sometimes they are study all three. In the event that you feel like you can pick a drama student out based a stereotype I would ask what they study. Because it’s more likely that they study anything from music to visual arts.” 

I think this is a conversation that happens between students all the time at Bennington and this snippet of my conversation depicts how students are conscious of the assumptions that we make on a daily basis. 

Hope that helps! 

-Michaela