The Moravian Dance Company is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Originally founded as a club, this organization has since grown into an official collegiate dance company with sixteen members. In 1975, Dawn Ketterman-Benner, who was hired in the fall of 1971 to expand Title IX opportunities for women at Moravian College, founded the Moravian Dance Club to increase physical and artistic activities for women.
Dance was her main vision, but with the help of the athletics department, Ketterman-Benner introduced women’s soccer, basketball, softball, cross country, track and field, lacrosse, and volleyball to the campus. Previously, tennis, badminton, archery, and field hockey were the only sports offered to women.
Her other roles on campus included physical education instructor and coach of the badminton, tennis, and archery teams. One of the classes Ketterman-Benner taught was a modern dance course. To gain more experience, she enrolled in modern dance and jazz classes during the summers and continued attending them throughout semesters she wasn’t teaching.
The same year the dance club was founded, it held its first concert in Johnston Hall during the spring semester. Five decades later, the company performed its 50th concert in Foy Concert Hall on South Campus.
During the spring of 1975, a group of college dance directors and presenters including Cynthia Kemmerer of Allentown College (now DeSales University), Richard Begbie of Cedar Crest College, Dawn Ketterman-Benner of Moravian College, Charlie Richter of Muhlenberg College, and Tom Tenges, the LVAIC Director and grant writer, established the LVAIC Dance Consortium.
This allowed the schools to combine their finances and performing spaces to secure grant funding from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. A few years later, Lehigh University and Lafayette College joined the consortium, providing professional dance opportunities for their students. For nine years, the Moravian Dance Club, which at this point were referred to as the MC Dancers, rehearsed and performed in a locker room in the back of Johnston Hall. The performances would be for standing room only. As increasing demands in the sports department arose, teams needed more room to practice. This forced the dancers to move to the newly constructed Foy Concert Hall on South Campus.
Moving to South Campus made a big difference in student attendance. To help solve the lack of attendees, Ketterman-Benner brought guest artists to performances. These guest artists brought in larger audiences and enhanced the MC Dancers’ reputation in the Lehigh Valley.
In 2000, the club officially became a company. That same year, Ketterman-Benner retired as the club’s artistic director but stayed involved as the faculty director until her retirement in 2014.
Susan McCabe ‘79, an alumna of the dance company, created the Dawn Ketterman-Benner Dance Fund to further dancers’ education and exposure to the dance world, including funding student attendance in master classes with professional artists.
Before Ketterman-Benner officially left Moravian, the company eventually relocated to the Root Cellar, an unused cafeteria on South campus, whose renovation in 2020 was made possible by a donation made from McCabe and a few other on-campus organizations and departments.
Because the 45th anniversary fell in 2020, the annual concert was not held. Student choreographers who spent countless hours preparing dancers to showcase their creations were left disappointed. In honor of those choreographers, the 50th anniversary concert will include a movement originally choreographed by Emily Bolger ‘20 meant to be performed in 2020. Additionally, dances from 1983, 1992, 2006, and 2012 will be showcased to show the audience the many phases of the Moravian Dance Company.
Lisa Busfield, the current artistic director, joined the company in 2018. Quickly after she joined, Busfield wrote up a curriculum to propose that dance should be recognized as an official minor. A year later, in the spring of 2019, Moravian approved Busfield’s proposal and the following spring semester, students could officially declare dance as a minor.
“Through the years I was there, it became apparent that the talent and commitment from our dancers surpassed an extracurricular activity,” said Mary Anne Hoffman, Busfield’s predecessor, who was the artistic director for twelve years. “The seriousness of our dancers and the rigor of our faculty propelled the Moravian Dancers to the place where they could meld their artistic vision with academics; which led to the dance minor.”
The company has fostered a tight-knit community among its dancers, providing an environment for them to express themselves creatively.
Veronica Stangl ‘27 who is a member of the dance company and a student choreographer finds that what the company offers to its members are invaluable. “Whether we are attending a masterclass to learn and grow with professional dancers, performing on stage to showcase pieces set by faculty and student choreographers, or simply rehearsing in the studio with the family of dancers we have created, we are always sharing our passion for the athleticism and artistry of what we know and love as dance,” said Stangl.
Another student choreographer and company member, John Cole ‘26 has taken full advantage of everything the dance company has to offer. “Each week, I work on improving my physical movement through ballet, tap, and modern dance classes. Along with enhancing my creative abilities through producing my own movement for our spring concert,” said Cole. “It has ultimately allowed me an outlet to express myself in a fun environment.”
So much has changed since the organization’s conception in 1975, and the company hopes to continue creating a rich history for another 50 years.
