From Eloy Barragán

Director of Dance Gala 2020: IN MOTION

The University of Iowa Department of Dance believes the arts can bring us together with hope and humanity. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed challenges to our in-person creative research activities. Rather than shutting down and taking the year off, we decided instead to find safe ways of allowing our students and faculty choreographers to continue their work and express their thoughts, ideas, and emotions to a broader audience than ever before. 

We are proud to offer our programming this academic year to the community for free, produced in a newly-developed virtual concert venue and exercising physical distancing and other viral mitigation measures. Our good-faith collective and collaborative effort expresses our unity and the sentiment of being together as artists and most importantly, people who love the arts.

We are all so grateful to our students, choreographers, dance artists, and production partners, as well as to the Department of Theatre Arts for hosting us and to the Division of Performing Arts, the Performing Arts Production Unit, and the UI Office of Strategic Communication for your incredible support! Thanks to all for enduring these challenging times and under new circumstances. 

Special thanks to Dr. Val Sheffield and his team for COVID testing all performers and choreographers for this event. 

We hope you all enjoy and keep supporting UI Dance, the arts, and education.