University’s only modern dance professor retires

Patrick Mustain, a Journalism School Graduate student specializing in the Medical and Science Journalism Program, slack-lining in the upper quad Thursday. He says he was does it "If it's really nice out and I have an hour I can spare, I feel an obligation to go outside." How he got into it: "I climb, I rock climb, and so it's one of those things if you climb you have all this gear anyway so it's a nice activity to do if you're not climbing."

At the end of the spring semester, the University will lose its only modern dance professor.

Though she will be replaced by a former student, her departure signals the end of the golden age of dance at UNC.

In the 1970s, when Marian Hopkins first became a professor, there were 22 sections of dance offered, she said. Now, Hopkins is one of two dance professors — and the only one teaching modern dance.

Modern dance, Hopkins said, is different from ballet, the other dance style offered at UNC, because the movements are more organic.

“For those who do it, it is a feeling that you get,” she said. “You feel very passionate. It feels good to you— so good that when you are not doing it, you miss it.”

Arthritis inhibits Hopkins from performing modern dance, but she said she feels gratified watching her students grow.

“I feel there is something within their bodies that I have helped them to find and that will stay with them,” she said.

Hopkins said dancing is not so much a physical activity as it is a necessary part of life, especially for the dancers she advises in the Modernextension Dance Company.

For Hopkins, this makes the lack of a dance major at UNC more distressing.

“The administration has always felt that dance has appropriately existed at UNC-Greensboro and at the (UNC) School of the Arts,” she said. “They overlook the fact that this is the main campus and that many students want to go here.”

Christine Jackson, co-president of Modernextension, said the lack of dance at a university that otherwise excels in the liberal arts is “nonsensical.”

“There are a lot of dancers who are frustrated,” Jackson said.

“The decision to come to UNC means sacrificing dance.”

Sherry Salyer, director of undergraduate studies in the exercise and sport science department, said in an email that although a committee in 2010 considered creating a dance minor at UNC, the proposal was shelved due to the economic climate.

Erin Sanderson, the other co-president of Modernextension, said many dancers must come to terms with the fact that they will no longer dance.

“For Marian, it is now,” she said. “For me, it is this year, too.”

But Hopkins said she will never stop dancing.

After her retirement, Hopkins said she will again focus on her body after 32 years spent helping students come into their own.

“I will have more time for pilates now — for my own fitness,” she said.

But for Hopkins, Jackson and Sanderson, nothing can compare to modern dance.

“Most of us can’t imagine life without dance,” Sanderson said.

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“You can’t just stop and go running. The thing about running is that it is just one step in front of the other. There is no musicality.”

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