After a rigorous dance workshop with UW undergraduate and student teacher Ella Rosewood, an elementary school class was asked how the movement had made them feel. “Fun!” was the most common response. Amid these typical third grade descriptions, though, one girl spoke at great length and detail of how exactly it had felt for her to dance. After the lesson ended, the teacher approached Rosewood. “You know that girl who said all of that stuff”? she said. “That was the third time I’ve heard her speak all year.”
For a UW fifth year student graduating this semester, Ella Rosewood is not your typical undergraduate. She is earning a double degree in dance and elementary education, and is currently embarking on her own full-scale dance production – almost unheard of for someone at her level of schooling. She gets up at five every morning to work out, student teaches at Wingra School full time, attends a seminar class and somehow has the time to be in contact with the many people involved in her solo modern dance production, titled “Second Skin,” to premier this December 10-12 at Music Hall – a feat more typical for someone attaining a Masters degree. The drive behind her efforts, she says, is a love for what she does and the hope to incorporate the community in the arts, particularly in dance. She says that dance is an oft-overlooked, powerful form of self expression.
“Modern dance started off as rejection of ballet around turn of century. People wanted to define themselves in way that ballet and the confines of that technique couldn’t necessarily give them,” she said. “[It’s] anything that you want it to be.”
Rosewood described how she had never even been in a dance studio until coming to college a little over four years ago. After not making the UW dance team as a freshman, she knew she still wanted to dance. It was the fact that she was an underdog in the dance world at UW that made her strive to prove herself as a dancer – and being a blank slate made her more susceptible to improvement.
“My first day of college I ended up signing up for three very basic [dance] electives,” she said. “I was getting corrected every minute, but I was in love; I wanted to be a dance major. I was trying to play catch up. I saw all these people who had more experience and technique than me, and it kind of gets to you. I kept taking classes and my technique kept improving really fast; I took classes outside of school and stayed after with the teachers. I had never been trained wrong, so I was just like a sponge; everything anyone said I could immediately apply.”
During this process of being immersed in dance, one respected teacher of Rosewood’s, Li Chiao-Ping, told her the technique was coming along fine, but she was not interesting to watch. Rosewood took this criticism well, saying it was the very push she needed to grow as an artist. This conversation had a direct effect on the project she would begin as a junior, the “Second Skin” solo production. Using a grant, she was able to select five nationally-acclaimed choreographers, Tim Glenn, Li Chiao-Ping, Janet Lilly, Beth Soll and Luc Vanier, to create personalized solo dances for her, as well as for Rosewood to create her own original dance.
“One of my goals was to create a very diverse project for both myself and my audience, dynamic changes from scene to scene… [The choreographers are from] all around the country, all different backgrounds, all extremely talented and well-versed,” she said.
After traveling around the country working on this project, one common theme emerged for Rosewood. She realized that these five solos were designed specifically for her, and would likely never be formally performed by anyone else. Thus, the theme of the concert became transformation, in particular the many ways in which she has had to transform in each solo dance.
“I started to realize that all the pieces were about a change; physical, social, emotional. It was almost like wearing a second skin… it was me, but not quite there. Like trying on different outfits, or a creature of some sort, losing a layer to become myself.”
While Rosewood realizes the personal nature of her performance, it is always community members, such as the 600-plus children she has reached out to, that she has in the forefront with this project.
“I don’t want people to think it’s a self glorification since I have six solos,” she said. “I really want to involve the community in the arts, specifically in dance.”
To learn more and purchase tickets for Ella Rosewood’s solo show, “2nd Skin,” visit ellarosewooddance.com.
