Students dance their way to graduation at the last production of the year

Holly Logan and Rachael Fox, senior dance performance majors, have been dancing at Kent State for four years but first hit the floor long before that.

“I started around age 3 because I saw it, and I wanted to do it,” Fox said.

Logan started dancing when she was 13 at a performing arts school for theater.

“I hated it at first,” Logan said. “(Dancing) is just kind of what I ended up doing.”

The Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Dance Concert is the last production the graduating seniors are involved in as students at Kent State. The concert is completely student-run, assistant dance professor Barbara Verlezza said.

Before starting at Kent State, Fox and Logan quit dancing for a few years but came to Kent State as dance minors.

“Well, actually I came to Kent State as a theater major,” Logan said. “I (later) decided that I enjoyed the dance department better. And dance is more what I wanted to do than anything else. It just made the right fit.”

Fox quit dancing for a few years because she was so busy.

“I was a hard-core ballerina,” Fox said. “I was in a company up through high school and I quit because it just got too overwhelming.”

Fox at first didn’t think she would be able to make it as a professional dancer in such a competitive industry.

“I decided to come to college and I looked at a couple different things,” she said, “stuff that I thought would be satisfying, and I didn’t find interest in anything.”

But in her freshman year Verlezza convinced Fox she had the needed talent.

“That was the biggest step,” Fox said. “All I needed was one person to tell me that, ‘You can do it; you can make it,’ and from there on out I never looked back. I was just dead-set that I was going to be a professional dancer.”

Fox found out early that dancing is very competitive and the people are “catty.” But she got a new perspective when she came to Kent State.

“If you push yourself the hardest you can and not compare yourself or compete with other people, that’s where you get your respect,” Fox said. “I realized how low-budget things are, and especially doing the BFA thing with the budget, if you don’t support each other then art is going to fail. You need to have respect for everybody around you and yourself.”

Logan said dance taught her acceptance and confidence.

“When you’re doing a piece that’s so long and you’re out of breath, and you don’t think you can make it and you make it, there’s something that happens that’s like, ‘I can do more than I think I can do,'” she said.

Fox loves the movement of dance and said nothing like money is necessary to dance.

“There’s just something about watching people move and that you can do it with nothing,” she said. “You have your body and that’s all you need. I enjoy watching it. I could watch someone move all day.”

Fox is heading to New York City in October and hopes to get picked up by a dance company. But she would eventually like to teach because her dance teachers were some of the most influential people in her life.

After graduation, Logan wants to join a dance company but eventually wants to get her master’s degree in dance education, work in urban communities and teach dance for free.

“I don’t think people should have to pay for these opportunities,” Logan said. “It’s a part of life. It’s what you learn. Arts are for everybody.”

Contact performing arts reporter Sara Petersen at [email protected].