Grossmont College Dance Department is presenting its last dance concert of the season with “Entrances & Exits 2024, a faculty choreographed dance concert with faculty choreographers Nancy Boskin-Mullen, Jazmyn Brown, Brittany Gómez, Lesa Green, Gina Bolles Sorensen, and Kyle Sorensen, along with Melissa Adao (guest artist) and Lauren Pym (Grossmont College Dance alumnus), will be presenting an evening of new works. The shows will be May 9-11 at 7:30 p.m. at the colleges Performing and Visual Arts Center. Admission is $10.
Co-director, Department of Dance Professor and Chair David Mullen said the dance department has two dance concerts a year.
“In the fall, we do a student choreographed and performed dance concert, so we have student choreographers do their work, and in the spring, we do a faculty choreographed, student performed dance concert. Dance students from the department audition, rehearse, and perform.”
Mullen said the concert shows a variety of different concepts of dance, from tap, hip-hop, contemporary, modern, and ballet.
“It is a very diverse program,” he said. “We at the dance department believe that it is important to give our students opportunities to perform. This fits the bill for that. There are about 35 to 40 students involved in the concert.”
Mullen said when COVID hit, the dance department took a huge hit because you cannot teach dance online. He said with such a big hit in all dance departments due to the pandemic, it is nice to see students performing and with the college’s support is looking to build the department back up again, and looks forward to “getting over this hump.”
“Teaching dance on Zoom does not work,” he said. “We are slowly bringing things back in our program and in every semester, it seems like enrollment gets better and better.”
Mullen said that although students audition, the department is all about inclusion.
“We include as many students as possible,” he said. “Faculty is encouraged to cast as many students as they can. The auditions are basically to see which students have skills and what their skills are. It is not a competitive thing. We focus on including as many students as we possibly can. We are very fortunate to have 40 students, and if we could have 50, we would.”
Mullen said with three weeks to go, rehearsals are going well, with choreographers tweaking the last-minute adjustments for the concerts.
