The University of California, Davis, will honor the late Professor Della Davidson by putting the acclaimed dancer-choreographer’s name on the studio that was “her creative home on campus.”
The studio in Nelson Hall will be named the Della Davidson Performance Studio in a ceremony taking place from 5 to 6 p.m. Friday. The event will be held at the studio and is open to the public.
She was a faculty member in the Department of Theatre and Dance from 2001 until her death in March 2012.
“She loved the space and it was her creative home on campus,” said Jon Rossini, chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance.
Davidson established the department’s Sideshow Physical Theatre, and played an important role in developing the interdisciplinary Master of Fine Arts program in theater and dance.
She started her career as a ballet dancer in New York, then moved into modern dance and choreography, earning a Master of Arts degree from the University of Arizona. She became associate director of the San Francisco Moving Company in 1983 and started the Della Davidson Dance Company in 1986. She won the Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography and the North American Award for Choreography.
Her dances have a strong narrative content, merging the physical form of dance with elements of theater. Many of her pieces evoked women’s strength, physicality and sensuality, and tackled gender stereotypes.
“To watch one of her dance pieces was like watching a dream, full of emotion and power,” Rossini said.
Rossini described Davidson as “an expert mentor who inspired and guided a whole new generation of choreographers and dancers, many of whom now have their own companies.”
Eric Kupers danced with Davidson’s company in the 1990s and later studied with her while earning his M.F.A. at °ϲĻϢ Davis.
“I consider her my artistic mentor,” said Kupers, an associate professor at California State University, East Bay. “She had this way of watching and listening to us improvise and rehearse that inspired a deeper sense of ourselves."
“There was a kind of magic that arose in that studio,” Kupers said. “That space felt like her special temple. It felt like a creative womb.”
Kupers and three more of Davidson’s dancers and creative partners, Jane Schnorrenberg, Kerry Mehling and Kegan Marling, will lead a dance workshop from 1 to 4 p.m. Friday in the studio. It is open to the public.
Besides naming the studio after Davidson, the Department of Theatre and Dance is creating, in her name, an endowment fund to foster the development of student choreographers through artist residences, travel and training. About $16,000 has been raised toward a $25,000 goal.
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Jeffrey Day, Arts, humanities and social sciences, 530-219-8258, jaaday@ucdavis.edu