Audience members are invited to move from their seats and Tanner Dance will invite audience members onstage participation in the beginning to explore ideas of how poetry and dance go hand in hand.
Artists
November 8, 2024
11 am & 1 pm
Jeanne Wagner Theatre | Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center
“Why do we dance? Is it joy? Pain? Hope? A language the body speaks when words fall short? We asked our dancers one question: ‘Why do you dance?’ And they answered…”
“I dance because it’s where I feel the most alive.”
“I dance because the world makes more sense when I move.”
“I dance when I’m happy. I dance when I’m not. Either way… I feel.”
At Tanner Dance, we move as one.
Not the same, but together.
In dance, we find community.
In rhythm, we find family.
We dance because this is where everyone can belong.
Dance is more than movement—it is voice, memory, connection. In creating “I Dance Because,” we invited each dancer to reflect on why they move. Their stories have shaped every gesture and every step. We hope this performance inspires you to reflect on what moves you.
Virginia Tanner created the Tanner Dance Program in 1949, and today the program continues to nurture an appreciation of dance, music, literature, theater and visual arts in a beautiful home, the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts and Education Complex. The program reaches over 40,000 children and adults throughout Utah each year through Children’s Dance Theatre, the Virginia Tanner Creative Dance and Studio Program with classes on the University of Utah campus and in satellite locations throughout Utah, the Arts in Education Program, the Fine Arts Preschool and French Immersion Preschool, and Dancers with Disabilities programs for children and adults. Tanner Dance is an arts auxiliary of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Utah and is dedicated to the University’s mission of teaching, research, and service.
Virginia Tanner’s vision of creating joyous, worthwhile human beings through dance and the arts has become an enduring seventy-five-year legacy. Since its inception, the University of Utah Tanner Dance Program has brought the joy and positive influence of the arts into the lives of more than one million students, teachers, and community members. Today, the Tanner Dance Program is different, yet remarkably the same. The organization is much larger and serves a broader range in its growing community, but Miss Virginia’s founding philosophies are the guiding principles. The tradition continues: roots, strong training in the art form of dance, and wings, the nurturing of imagination and creativity.
