Choreographing Cranes: UM Double Major Blends Biology with Ballet
Editor’s note: Read the to see more photos and video.
By Abigail Lauten-Scrivner, UM News Service
MISSOULA – Wildlife biology and dance might not make sense as interconnected majors to some, but they do to 猎奇重口 junior Taylor Ferguson. This past academic year, she demonstrated how.
Ferguson grew up in Wichita, Kansas, convinced she would move to New York City for dance school. Then, a high school family trip to Big Sky Country and her first black bear encounter changed those plans.
“I kind of became hyper fixated on bears and what they do,” she said. “Being in Glacier for the first time was a big moment for me. I was like, ‘Whoa, these places exist and they need to be protected.’”
Ferguson began to research bears and consider wildlife biology as a career path. Having loved dance since age 3 though, she refused to abandon her lifelong passion.
“I didn’t want to give either one up,” she said.
At UM, Ferguson found the support to major in both – and will still graduate in four years.
In addition to her dance and wildlife biology degrees, Ferguson also is pursuing UM’s and is a member of the Davidson Honors College. She’s taken 21 or more credits each semester, plus attending rehearsals and working, and often has to puzzle overlapping wildlife biology labs and dance classes together. But she’s received flexibility and support from faculty and staff in both her majors to make it all work.
“It's really intense, but it's so deeply fulfilling,” Ferguson said.
Heidi Jones Eggert, professor and head of dance in UM’s School of Theatre and Dance, said she tries to set appropriate expectations with double major dancers about their potential workload and timeline, but is supportive of her students’ pursuing all their passions.
“I love them gaining all experience and wisdom that helps them become a better artist,” she said.
Bears are still of interest to Ferguson. Last summer she interned with the Anderson Ranch in Gardiner, observing grizzlies that frequented a nearby field each night. Tourists flocked to see the large mammals up close, and Ferguson spread education amongst the observers, discussing bear biology and explaining why the grizzlies came to the area to dig up roots to eat.
“Bears have been a common thread for me,” Ferguson said. “I’m currently really interested in how to manage them in a way that is beneficial to both ranchers and bears.”
Ferguson’s idea to connect her two majors first sparked during the summer between her first and second years at UM while doing a restoration course in the greater Yellowstone area with the Missoula-based Wild Rockies Field Institute.
While working at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, two large prehistoric-looking birds flew overhead, their rattling call echoing throughout the valley. They were sandhill cranes: a long-legged, blueish-gray bird with a shock of red adorning its head.
“I had never heard anything like that,” she said. Watching them soar moved her to tears.
Ferguson became fascinated and dove deep into researching the cranes. They’re believed to be the oldest living bird species on earth, according to the 猎奇重口 Natural History Center. The oldest known sandhill crane fossil is about 2.5 million years old.
Ferguson also learned about their intricate courtship rituals where pairs of cranes dance for each other. She began thinking about how to embody their graceful movement.
The idea became her dance junior project and a submission to the American College Dance Association regional conference’s formal concert this spring. Dances presented at the formal concert receive feedback from professional adjudicators.
“It’s a big honor and really exciting to have my work shown to other people across the region,” she said. “It's just really exciting.”
Titled “The Sedge” after the name for a group of cranes, the nearly six-minute dance Ferguson choreographed personifies a year in the life of sandhill cranes and their migration patterns. She dressed her eight dancers – all UM students – in white silk slip dresses, black biker shorts and socks, and bright red eyeshadow to subtly emulate the birds’ visage as they dance ballet style to ethereal music.
Ferguson had her dancers watch tons of sandhill crane videos and study their biology and behavior, integrating her two passions together by beginning rehearsals with a wildlife biology lesson. She strove to translate as much scientific information through the choreography as possible, depicting migration, wintering, nest defense and other behavior patterns.
“Art is such a universal communicator,” she said. “Scientific articles are not accessible, so how can we use art to take that science and make it accessible so people can connect to it? This project was the first time putting that into practice.”
After her first time showcasing “The Sedge” at UM’s Dance Underground, an audience member praised the dance and told Ferguson he could tell without being informed that it was about sandhill cranes. The experience reinforced to Ferguson that she really could synthesize her two main interests.
First-year dance major Tilly Ekers, who came to UM from Truckee, California, was cast in “The Sedge” her first semester. A dancer since age 3, learning Ferguson’s choreography was an entirely new experience for Ekers.
“I’ve never been a part of a process that starts like that,” Ekers said, recalling a rehearsal where Ferguson began with a lesson about sandhill cranes’ hollow bones and challenging the dancers to embody that as a warmup.
“We’re also learning about something (Ferguson) is so beyond passionate about,” Ekers added. “I saw a flock of geese flying overhead the other day, and my first thought was ‘Taylor.’”
After spending time learning about them, Ekers and the other dancers were tasked with creating an 8-count movement depicting different aspects of sandhill crane behavior. Each was workshopped by the group and eventually fit into the dance.
“This piece was choreographed by everybody in the ensemble – we got to put our own strengths in,” Ekers said. “Taylor made it feel very much like a community where we worked together.”
Ekers underscored her excitement at the opportunity to showcase the dance and attend the American College Dance Association conference as a freshman.
“It’s very synchronized, and it’s really beautiful to the eye to see something that is so put together,” she said.
Besides representing an exciting chance to present their work on a larger stage, the national conference provides an opportunity for networking and receiving feedback from dance professionals from across the country, said UM Associate Professor of Dance Brooklyn Draper.
“It's a big deal,” Draper said of the conference. “It's life changing, because it impacts how they move forward with their creative scholarship and choreography in the future.”
Ferguson’s choreography exemplified opportunities at UM to bring interdisciplinary work together, Draper said.
Watching her dancers perform “The Sedge” at ACDA was an emotional experience for Ferguson. The joy of watching her work be performed mixed with the sadness of the project coming to an end. She and her dancers had become close over the past months.
“You could just tell how hard they were working on stage,” she said. “The feedback was really great, and one adjudicator said that it gave her the sense of soaring.”
“Having my first big choreographic experience turn out this way and get really positive feedback is so affirming,” Ferguson added.
That affirmation encouraged Ferguson to continue down her path of combining dance with wildlife biology. For her dance senior project next year, she’s considering choreographing a portrayal of elk in the rut.
She’s also excited to join the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation’s Human Dimensions Lab on human-wildlife interactions next semester.
Looking further forward, Ferguson plans to pursue a Ph.D. in a wildlife biology-related field – or maybe an MFA in dance.
“I've been very adamant thus far in my life about not choosing one or the other, and I'm not ready to make that choice anytime soon,” Ferguson said. “Maybe I’ll continue on this path of, ‘You can't make me choose.’”
###
Contact: Dave Kuntz, UM director of strategic communications, 406-243-5659, dave.kuntz@umontana.edu.