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Dance 4397:
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James ClouserJames Clouser who holds both MA and MFA degrees, began dancing while at the Eastman School of Music on an orchestral scholarship, studying the French horn and musical composition. He became familiar with the classical and contemporary ballet repertory as a member of the American Ballet Theatre and as principal artist with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet of Canada. A recipient of a Canada Council grant in 1965 he studied pedagogical styles in London, Copenhagen and Moscow. He first came to Texas in 1970 after establishing an international reputation as a dancer and choreographer, and having served on the faculties of the Juilliard School and Connecticut College. For the next several years he served as Ballet Master, Choreographer-in-Residence and Acting Artistic Director of the Houston Ballet. During these years he staged such classics as "Swan Lake, Act II" and "Napoli, Act III", and choreographed numerous original works including "Carmina Burana" and the rock-ballet, "Caliban". In 1976 he established a dance major at the University of Houston at Clear Lake City and founded Space/Dance/Theater which toured the Southwest with a repertory of unique and accessible dance works which included "Rasputin, the Holy Devil" starring Erik Bruhn. During this period he was the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowships. In recognition of his contributions to dance in Texas, which included the many ballets he created for the state's regional and professional companies in Houston, Galveston, San Antonio, Fort Worth and Dallas, the Texas Commission on the Arts honored him with their first Artistic Excellence Award. In 1982 he accepted an invitation to head the dance program at Loretto Heights College in Denver, where he subsequently became the Chairman of the Programs in Fine Arts. In 1988 he was appointed Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Ballet and Modern Dance at Texas Christian University. In 1990 he moved briefly to Ohio where he served as Artistic Director of the Dayton Ballet. He returned to the Southwest in 1993 to accept a faculty position at the University of North Texas where he remained until his retirement in May of 2000. He continues to be active as a choreographer and master teacher, as well as lecturing on kinesiologically sound methods of ballet training. Over the last decade his choreographic work has been presented in Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas, Houston, El Paso, Lexington, Cincinnati, Greensboro, Tucson, Denver, Des Moines, and Chicago, as well as at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in Paris, and at the Avignon Festival in France. A special collection of materials concerning his earlier work is housed in the Performing Arts Library at the University of Texas in Austin. |
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