By Alicia Nemiccolo MacLeay '97

Tina Wentzel, far right, with members of the Colby Dance Theater, in their March performance.

When Tina Wentzell became the College's dance instructor in 1973 there was no performing arts department, and Colby's dance program was part of the Physical Education Department. The dance studio was a room in the athletic center in which a thin linoleum floor had been laid over bone-jarring concrete.

Despite this modest introduction, Wentzell soon found there was student interest in dance at Colby. So she began building the dance program and moved it to the more accommodating Runnals gym (now Strider Theater) and began building the dance program.

Thirty years later Wentzell's introductory dance class and the improv class she team-teaches with Joylynn Wing, associate professor of theater and dance, have waiting lists. Concerts by Colby Dance Theater, the College's repertory dance company she directs, usually sell out.

"I think people like seeing bodies move," said Wentzell, now an adjunct professor in the eight-member Department of Theater and Dance. "There's something intriguing about movement for the population that doesn't dance. It's different than going to see a play."

But for Wentzell the choreographer, the sell-out audience, indeed any audience, is not necessary for success. The performance, she says, is for her student dancers. If I see that one evening where they're all on, personally I don't even have to have an audience. It's been achieved," said Wentzell. "For me the payback is working with them."

Wentzell choreographs a piece a year of her own work. "My mind goes off on wonderful tangents," she said. One semester it was factorials and chaos theory. She and light designer Jim Thurston, adjunct associate professor of theater and dance, collaborated on a piece that was designed to be random down to the lighting and music choices made each night. While Wentzell "set" several movement combinations on the dancers, the performance never started with the same dancers or had the same combinations. "It was so much fun," said Wentzell.

This year Anita Diamant's novel The Red Tent inspired Wentzell to create a piece set in Biblical times that focuses on the shared experience of women during menses and childbirth. It was performed at the annual Colby Dance Theater concert in March. Her sources are eclectic, and she also finds inspiration in the inventiveness of professionals, like Stomp and Blue Man Group, which she calls "captivating."

Wentzell teaches students to "broaden their movements horizon" while instilling in them the foundations and techniques of dance. Ultimately she wants students to find their own creative voices. "Teaching choreography is without a doubt my favorite class," she said. "I love what students come up with."

Heidi Henderson '83, an independent dance major and now a professional choreographer, had never taken a dance class before arriving at Colby. She met Wentzell when Wentzell choreographed her Skowhegan High School production of Brigadoon. "I had facility but no technical training," said Henderson, but at Wentzell's recommendation she took some dance classes her freshman year and a modern dance class one semester at Scripps College her junior year.

"I came back to Colby excited to dance," said Henderson, who designed her own major with Wentzell's help. "Tina was incredibly supportive of me despite the fact that I was more enthusiastic than experienced."

After graduating and earning an MFA in dance from Smith, Henderson toured for eight years as a dancer in the prominent companies of Bebe Miller, Nina Wiener, Paula Josa-Jones and others. She now teaches dance at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island and produces her own work. "Tina set me up to believe that I could do this thing I was so excited about despite overwhelming odds against me."

This January Henderson returned to campus to set "Skirt," her 1999 piece for five women, onto members of Colby Dance Theater. Henderson said the trip back let her "reconnect with the roots of my desire to do this thing, which has become my passion as well as my profession."

Henderson's full-time career in professional dance is a rarity. Most student dancers at Colby arrive already knowing dance will not be their career and they typically have a second major, says Wentzell. Knowing students may not devote their careers to dance doesn't temper Wentzell's devotion to dance though.

"You want a student who is engaged and present," she said. "I'd rather work with a student who will just work hard than a student who has the talent and is lazy. Those jewels, that gem that comes along, they make your teaching."