Dancers expand horizons through art

With auditions out of the way, Iris Rosa, IU professor and director of the African American Dance Company, busily prepares for a new semester. Rosa tries to teach her students a diverse mixture of dance styles.\nFor a native Puerto Rican, growing up in a steel-mill community in East Chicago, Indiana, the opportunities for self expression in the form of dancing were limited, as Rosa learned growing up.\nBorn in Guayama, Puerto Rico in 1950, Rosa moved with her family to northern Indiana to meet her father, a migrant worker who was already living there at the time. It wasn’t until she entered high school that she was first exposed to dance and the opportunities that went with it. Although Rosa dabbled in dance during high school when a physical education teacher taught some students about the techniques of dance, it wasn’t until she came to IU that she knew she wanted to pursue dance as a major.\n“Basically Indiana University gave me the foundation of the discipline, some of the technique and the protocol,” as well as many opportunities to perform dance, Rosa said.\nWith a bachelor’s degree in physical education and a master’s degree in dance, Rosa became the director of IU’s African American Dance Company in 1974. The dance company is first and foremost a class, where each semester students audition and get the chance to perform what they learn throughout \nthe semester.\nWorking with the African American Dance Company has been a way for Rosa to broaden her knowledge of dance and also instruct others in what she has learned.\n“I’m trained in modern dance, but I also went out to pursue other types of forms of dance, like Caribbean, African, other dance styles to widen my vocabulary,” Rosa said.\nAs a choreographer for the dance company, Rosa brings her own aesthetic and experience to the table. In teaching her students new dances, she said she likes to “fuse a lot of African-derived types of movement with modern dance, my own training.”\nHer students learn everything from Caribbean dance movements to modern dance used by African-American choreographers and dancers in their routines, Rosa said. In the study of dance, she feels it is most important to open your mind to a diverse selection of styles. It is not just about going into the studio and learning a couple of dance moves, it can get quite involved, she said.\n“I think that’s what people don’t see; they usually see the ending product of a performance,” Rosa said, “But they don’t really see what goes into preparing, years and years of study, and then choreography is a whole different skill.”\nAs a choreographer, her own dance ideas are inspired by her students. Current political and social events also inspire her dancing, as well as new trends in dance.\n“You can’t live in a bubble, so you have to go see other performances that inspire,” \nRosa said.