Rice IT has the moves to share Alvin Ailey dance class with UT-Austin

Learning the two-step
Rice IT has the moves to share Alvin Ailey dance class with UT-Austin

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

“Austin? You’re cool?”

They were, and they let dancer Michael Thomas know with a loud shout from another part of the state.

Thomas, representing the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, came to Rice this week and simultaneously spent quality time with students at the University of Texas in Austin.

	TOMMY LAVERGNE
	Michael Thomas of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater leads a  master class at the Rice Dance Theater’s temporary studio. The class was transmitted by videoconference to a studio at the University of Texas in Austin.

Through the magic of videoconferencing, Thomas and other members of the company, booked for weekend performances at Houston’s Jones Hall, were at Rice March 25 to teach a master class to the Rice Dance Theater (RDT) and also to dancers at UT-Austin.

Twenty-one members of the RDT and their counterparts in Austin got a tutorial on modern, African and hip-hop dance. With cameras covering the action at Rice and UT, Thomas was also able to keep an eye on students in Austin on a screen set up at the RDT’s temporary dance studio behind Autry Court.

“It’s a marvelous opportunity for Rice dance students to learn contemporary technique from masterful, traveled artists in the Ailey company,” said Leslie Scates, a well-known Houston choreographer who joined Rice last year as the assistant director for dance programs and director of the Recreation Center’s 30-year-old RDT.

It was also a good opportunity for Rice IT’s manager of educational technologies, Carlos Solis, to show what he and his staff can do. This was the second cross-campus videoconference produced in cooperation with Houston’s Society for the Performing Arts (SPA) — a previous one involved a visiting tango company — but the first to be done in a roomful of mirrors.

“The room itself is not by any stretch technology friendly,” said Solis, who was careful to avoid beaming a funhouse-mirror effect to Austin. “But because Rice has deployed such an extensive networking infrastructure — even to temporary spaces — we were able to pull it off.”

All the gear was routed from the studio to the instructors’ adjacent offices. That’s where Solis and his team, which included Tom Lytle, Doug Killgore, Aaron Ageitos, Bryan Grandy and Jane Puthaaroon, were able to connect their multimedia gear to the Rice network and rout signals to and from Austin.

Camera positions, music sources and wireless microphones all had to be just right so the instructor could see and hear his students in both locations and so they could see and hear him throughout the 90-minute class.

With Rice students around and behind on the dance floor, Thomas faced the screen that served as a mirror for him and showed what students in Austin were seeing. Every now and then, a shout-out to the UT crew brought a response from speakers along the back of the Rice studio. A flick of a switch by Solis let the teacher see what was happening at UT, where Director of Dance Studies David Justin kept an eye on things.

All that was just part one of the project. Part two will be to put together a video of the day’s activities (available here), incorporating interviews with Ailey representatives, students and faculty to share with the SPA.

“For our part, we want to create opportunities for students where technology can impact their educations outside of the standard classroom setting.”

Scates is looking forward to future shared classes at Rice Dance Theater’s new space at the Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center, expected to open in August. In the meantime, Rice audiences will get to see what her company can do at its annual spring concert April 17-18 at 7:30 p.m. at Hamman Hall.

Solis relishes the challenges videoconferencing offer. “We want to create for students opportunities where technology can impact their education outside of the standard classroom setting,” he said.

“It’s not just about getting the equipment in place — it’s also about getting the Rice community thinking outside our common boundaries of teaching and learning.”