Betsy
Blair
Dance and Design
Biography
Employment:
Since 1980, Betsy Blair has been sole proprietor of a small business,
Betsy Blair, Dance and Design, contracting with various arts and education
organizations which need her dance-design services as a teacher, producer,
writer, performer, and workshop leader. She has also helped to design
children's dance and modern dance curriculum for Arts Together in Raleigh
and the Durham Arts Council School in Durham, North Carolina. In 2002,
she began making educational dance booklets for teacher training.
A detailed list of her many projects is available upon request. The
list includes WRAL-TV, the Durham Arts Council School, the creative
Arts Program in Public and Private Schools, Arts Together in Raleigh,
the Governor Morehead School for the Blind, PlaySpace in Raleigh, the
Carolina Friends School in Durham, Meredith College Continuing Ed.,
Duke University's Institute of the Arts, and the University of Arizona,
Women's Studies Program.
Education:
Master of Arts, Dance Program, Drama Department, University of Arizona
Master of Arts, Product Design, School of Design, North Carolina Sate
University
Bachelor of Arts, English major, Art minor, Agnes Scott College
Grants and Honors:
Hitchings Award for Service to the Art of Dance, sponsored by the Durham
Arts Council
Emerging Artist Grant, sponsored by the Durham Arts Council
The Raleigh Medal of Arts, sponsored by the City of Raleigh
Creative Project Grants, sponsored by the North Carolina Arts Council,
Collaboration with Liz Lerman Project, Washington, D.C. Commission on
the Arts and Humanities
Dance/Music Project Grant, N.C. Governor's Commission on Arts and the
Handicapped
Grassroots Arts Grants, Wake County (Raleigh) various grants
Scholarships:
Full out-of-state tuition Scholarship for graduate work in dance, University
of Arizona, Tucson
Young Performer Scholarship for full tuition, American Dance Festival
Receipt of two Dana Scholarships for dance toward tuition, Agnes Scott
College
Phi Beta Kappa, honor society, Agnes Scott College
Dance Training:
Betsy Blair has had the opportunity to study various German and German-American
traditions of modern dance in depth, especially with her teachers Carolyn
Byrum (a Mary Wigman student), Hanya Holm, Murray Louis, Peggy Hackney,
and Isa Bergsohn (Jooss Technique). She has also been influenced by
the musicality of the Limon dance tradaition through her studey with
Lucas Hoving and Betty Jones various summers at the American Dance Festival
Another important influence has been dancer and movement theorist John
Wilson of Tucson, Arizona, with whom she studied daily for three years
in graduate school. Throughout her lifetime Betsy Blair has danced each
summer in Montreat , N. C. , with Glenn Bannerman, an expert in teaching
and calling Southern Appalachian big circle dances and traditional North
Carolina square dance formations. Currently, Ms. Blair is learning how
to clog in the traditional Southern Appalachian style.
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