On Nov. 10, USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance’s Career Services team hosted a virtual presentation on entrepreneurship for dancers and other artists. Marianne Szymanski, an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at the USC Marshall School of Business, spoke at the event where she advised students on how to become an entrepreneur and start their own businesses.

We received an opportunity for USC Kaufman and USC Thornton students to produce and perform a Broadway-inspired song and dance number. The performance would air as part of the NBC Sports LA Fan Fest event taking place at the Coliseum, home to our USC Trojan Football team.

Earlier this year, the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance announced that artist Kyle Abraham will join its faculty as the Claude and Alfred Mann Endowed Professor. As part of the school’s partnership with Abraham, he and his company, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham, will host their Winter Intensive at the Glorya Kaufman International Dance Center every December.

During the fall semester the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance’s community engagement initiative, Kaufman Connections, forged on despite having to adapt to an online format. In addition to engaging community artists, the program organized a virtual hip-hop dance celebration for 32nd Street Elementary School students and their families.

This past semester, sophomore musical theatre students worked with USC Kaufman faculty members Kate Dunn and Dawn Stoppiello, Tony Award-winner Peter Darling and Artistic Director Jacob Jonas to produce short dance films to musical theatre songs.

The USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance has received a generous gift of $1 million from an anonymous donor. This gift will be used to create an endowment fund, which will support artistic collaborations between the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance and the USC Thornton School of Music.

A unique aspect of Lott’s Visions and Voices series is the addition of artists from both inside and outside of the USC community. In both “Caught in the Chamber” and “Activated Chambers,” chamber ensemble yMusic’s involvement has been a central aspect of the process.

With the help of current Batsheva dancers and GAGA teachers Billy Barry and Kyle Scheurich, Bret Easterling will bring the mysterious technique to Los Angeles dancers, imparting its special tactics for body awareness and sensation.

The ephemeral nature of dance as an art form is widely discussed throughout the medium—how, scholars ask, can we archive the history of a movement that begins and ends with the blink of an eye? A new project at the USC Libraries is taking one approach to this eternal problem.

Downstairs in the Glorya Kaufman International Dance Center, the Topaz studio undergoes a transformation by night—it is no longer a classroom, but instead New York’s Upper West Side as students rehearse the beloved classic “West Side Story.”

By Ardyn Flynt and Juan Miguel Posada

The Jets versus the Sharks–in KDC 106 this semester, the diverse student cast of West Side Story is making its way toward opening night in Bing Theatre, March 29. The program will be the very first collaboration between USC Kaufman, USC Thornton, and USC School of Dramatic Arts, and it doubles as a Visions & Voices event.

A collaboration between the USC School of Dramatic Arts, USC Thornton School of Music and USC Glorya Kaufman School Dance West Side Story, features students from all three school in a poignant, provocative, and emotionally powerful musical that transports William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to mid-1950s New York City, as two young, idealistic lovers find themselves caught between warring street gangs

The Music Center’s Spotlight Awards are celebrating 30 years this season; among the program’s alumni are American Ballet Theatre principal Misty Copeland, Alvin Ailey Dance Theater rehearsal director Matthew Rushing and now several USC Kaufman BFA students.

This summer, the USC Kaufman School of Dance has played host to the west coast intensives for Hubbard Street Dance and Complexions Contemporary Ballet. This past week, Gaga USA came in to be our final intensive of the season.

Last month, Hubbard Street inhabited the USC Kaufman studios with a choreographic intensive featuring four choreographers. This month, ballet takes its place in the Ruby and Amethyst studios as the Complexions Academy intensive moves in for two weeks.

Last summer, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago took the Glorya Kaufman International Dance Center for a spin—in June of 2016, their inaugural Los Angeles intensive became the first official program in USC Kaufman’s brand new facility. Now, the company returns for a second summer on the west coast.