The University of Nevada, Reno's Department of Theatre and Dance recently produced strong student finishes at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival competition and The American College Dance Association conference.

The American College Dance Association conference is a venue for many college and university dance programs to perform outside their own academic setting and for students to be exposed to the diversity of the national college dance world.

Due to the outstanding performance at the conference of "Ordinary Things" - a contemporary dance work with a comedic tone - the six University dancers were chosen to perform at the Gala concert, which showcased the best dance works from the conference. Of the 40 dances performed, this was this first time that the University was selected in the top 11.

"This is a huge honor for University theatre and dance," Rosie Trump assistant professor of dance at the University, said. "Having our dance received this well at the conference speaks to the high caliber of work the faculty and students are doing. It also means that we stack up very well against our regional peers."

The four-day conference took place at Scottsdale Community College in Scottsdale, Arizona. Students attended from 26 colleges within Arizona, Utah, California and Nevada, and they performed, attended masters classes and watched concerts together.

"The University's dance minor has been rapidly growing in interest, scope and size for the past few years," Trump said. "The students are striving for excellence and the faculty are supporting the students' interests by offering the opportunities of diverse and rigorous classes, world-renowned guest artist residencies and master classes, and semester dance productions of students, faculty and guest artists."

In addition to dance, two student actors attended the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in Denver, Colorado. After watching the student-produced play adapted from the 1960's novel "To Kill a Mockingbird," Julius Funches, who played Tom Robinson, and Keely Cobb, who played Scout - and also attended the dance conference, were personally selected by a representative from the Kennedy Center to participate in the Region VII Festival. They competed in three rounds, performing three pieces in each round. Funches made it to the final round out of 300 hundred actors, who came from Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, northern California, northern Nevada Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.

"In both theater and dance, we are training our students to do really good work and it is exciting to see that they are getting acknowledged for their talent and their skill," Robert Gander, theater and dance department chair at the University, said. "I think it is a great opportunity for students to go to Arizona and Colorado and look at the quality of work that the other people are doing on a national scale, and to see how well they compare. We are very proud of our students."