Photo by Tom Caravaglia

The Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Dance and Choreography is pleased to welcome choreographer Robert Battle as a distinguished artist-in-residence.

Nearly five years in the making, Battleworks Dance Company has garnered international attention for their technical prowess, musicality, and articulation of the body.  The company is precocious in its performance maturity with a repertory of idiosyncratic dances that are brilliantly composed and executed.

Robert Battle, a 33-year-old choreographer and former member of David Parsons's company, has hit upon an abstract signature style that is highly dramatic and focuses on repetitive stamping steps and bodies set aquiver, electrifying the stage with mounting energy and unique movement.  Mr. Battle possesses a dance vocabulary that utilizes gesture and nuance in a beautifully bizarre way that is both quirky and dramatic but also captivating and accessible.

A 1994 graduate of the Juilliard School, Mr. Battle is a recipient of the Golden Award for Outstanding African-American Choreographers given by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Princess Grace Dance Scholarship and the Martha Hill Prize. The Hubbard Street Repertory Ensemble, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dallas Black Dance Theater, and PARADIGM have commissioned Mr. Battle for both new works and re-stagings.  In 2003, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater premiered Mr. Battle's work, Juba, with rave reviews from Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times.  

Mr. Battle is in the midst of a seven-week residency at VCU Dance teaching and creating a new work for the department inspired by the rebellion, survival and celebration of African-Americans. VCU Dance Chair Martha Curtis has observed that "VCU dancers are connecting with his work with tremendous gusto! It is energizing to see a diverse cast of 18 young dancers embrace this subject matter and movement with such passion!”  Mr. Battle has also taught master classes in conjunction with Richmond City Parks and Recreation, Pine Camp Dance program, and the Richmond Ballet.  

Mr. Battle’s new work will be fully produced and presented in VCU Dance’s Student/Faculty Concert, March 2-4, 2006. Outreach for this project will continue through the remainder of the 2005-2006 academic year as VCU Dance majors offer lecture/presentations of Mr. Battle’s finished work in area high schools through the Richmond City Schools Arts and Humanities Program.

Funding for the Robert Battle residency and performance project is graciously provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation; VCUarts; Virginia Commission for the Arts; and The National College Choreography Initiative (NCCI), a Leadership Initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, administered by Dance/USA, the national service organization for professional dance.  

VCU Dance has taken a leadership role in dance and higher education with the department chair’s election as the president of the Council of Dance Administrators, an invited forum of the nation’s top 25 dance programs.   The department is committed to building and enlightening dance audiences in the University and Richmond community while providing opportunities for artists to present and create work.  Recognized by professional dancers and choreographers as “a place where things are happening,” VCU Dance offers a vibrant and stimulating atmosphere where students prepare for careers in dance.

VCU’s annual Architectural History Symposium helps nurture a fresh knowledge of architectural history by promoting continual research and preservation. This year’s symposium will be held at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, November 18, 2005, at the Virginia Historical Society.

The conference papers, under the direction of Professor Charles Brownell, will address topics ranging from Virginia Palladianism (manor houses of the late eighteenth century; the design sources for Monticello; twentieth-century Palladianism) through style circa 1890 (the impact of H. H. Richardson; Hector Guimard’s Castel Béranger; Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Italian drawings) to the American Renaissance (the mansions of Noland and Baskervill at VCU). Co-sponsors include the Virginia Historical Society; the Center for Palladian Studies in America; the Maymont Foundation; the Valentine Richmond History Center; the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities; Historic Richmond Foundation; Special Collections and Archives, James Branch Cabell Library; the Virginia Department of Historic Resources; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; the Library of Virginia; the Alliance to Conserve Old Richmond Neighborhoods; Henricus Historical Park; Richmond’s Lost Trades School; and the Virginia Center for Architecture.

Please make plans to join us on Friday, November 18 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The Virginia Historical Society is located at 428 North Boulevard, Richmond, Virginia. Admission is free for students, $8 per person for members of sponsoring institutions and $10 per person for others. The post-conference reception will be an additional charge of $5. For a brochure or other registration information please call (804) 828-2784.

Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUQ) has been awarded the honor of hosting Icograda’s Design Week in Doha, Qatar, for the year 2009. The International Council of Graphic Design Associations (Icograda) is a professional world body for graphic design and visual communication. Founded in 1963 in London, it is a voluntary body of associations concerned with graphic design, design management, design promotion, and design education. Icograda promotes graphic designers' vital role in society and commerce and unifies the voice of graphic designers and visual communication designers worldwide.

VCUQ earned the honor of hosting Design Week in Doha because of its status as a world-class university and its success as host of Tasmeem Doha during the past two years.

Icograda’s Design Week allows design industry professionals to get exposure to the major issues facing the design profession. It allows individuals from Europe, the Middle East and Asia to meet and share the latest technologies, ideas and experiences. This event will also allow participants to learn about the innovative design practices currently used in Doha.

Teresita Fernandez

VCU School of the Arts alumna Teresita Fernandez has received one of 25 prestigious MacArthur Fellow “Genius” Awards for 2005. She will receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years. As a sculptor she integrates architecture and the optical effects of color and light to produce exquisitely constructed, contemplative spaces. Ms. Fernandez received her MFA in sculpture from VCU School of the Arts in 1992.

This is the second MacArthur Fellowship awarded to a VCUarts graduate in three years, with ceramicist Daisy Youngblood receiving the first in 2003.

The full press release is available at http://www.macfound.org/programs/fel/announce.htm

More information on Ms. Fernandez is available at
http://www.macfound.org/programs/fel/fellows/fernandez_teresita.htm

Self-Portrait , Joe  Seipel 4' x 4' x 2'

VCUArts personnel in Richmond and Qatar now hold the following positions as President or Vice President in leading professional arts and design organizations:

Halim Choueiry, Professor of Graphic Design at VCUQ: Vice President, International Council of Graphic Design Associations
Martha Curtis, Chair of Department of Dance & Choreography: President, Council of Dance Administrators
Susan Roth, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs: Vice President, National Association of Schools of Art and Design
Joe Seipel, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
and Director of Graduate Studies: President, National Council of Art Administrators
Richard Toscan, Dean:President-Elect, International Council of Fine Arts Deans

VCUarts is proud of these faculty members and their involvement with these organizations. It is highly unusual for a single arts school to achieve such a concentration of national and international leadership positions in these professional associations.

In an effort to share its faculty resources with the community, the Department of Art History will continue to offer a Faculty Lecture Series throughout the academic year. This fall, the Department presents Dr. Michael Schreffler whose topic is “The Archangel’s Armor: Reflection and Citizenship in Bermejo’s St. Michael and the Devil.”

Dr. Schreffler received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2000. He teaches courses on art and architecture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain and Latin America as well as in modern and contemporary Latin America. His current research focuses on the representation of Spanish imperial power in the visual culture of the viceroyalty of New Spain [today, Mexico] in the seventeenth century.

Dr. Schreffler’s article, “Vespucci Rediscovers America: The Pictorial Rhetoric of Cannibalism in Early Modern Culture,” was recently published in Art History, The Journal of the Association of Art Historians, June 2005, ( Oxford, UK). This fall, he presented a paper to the 2005 Historians of Medieval Iberia Conference at the University of Exeter, England.

His research is widely published, and he is currently working on two forthcoming publications which include “Emblems of Virtue in Eighteenth-Century New Spain”, in Kellen McIntyre and Richard Phillips eds., Woman and Art in Early
Modern Latin America (Leiden: Brill); and “The Conquest of Mexico and the Representation of Imperial Power in Baroque New Spain,” in Rebecca Brienen and Margaret Jackson, eds., Invasion and Transformation: Perspectives on the
Conquest of Mexico ( Boulder: University Press of Colorado).

Dr. Schreffler’s lecture will take place at 4 p.m. on Thursday, November 10, at the Grace Street Theater, 934 W. Grace Street. The lecture is free and open to the public. Additional information is available by calling the Department of Art History at 804-828-2784.