Galloway, N.J. – Spring break looked a little different for the Stockton Dance Company this year, as dancers took the stage in Virginia to perform Sixth Breath, a collaborative work by Beau Hancock and Caitlin Quinn Pittenger, associate professors of Dance at Stockton. 

The piece was selected for the Small Plates Choreography Festival, a nationally recognized performance series dedicated to advancing the work of dance makers and providing artist promotion through curated performance adjudication by dance professionals. 

“To have Sixth Breath selected for the Small Plates Choreography Festival meant recognition for the work that Stockton Dance is doing, both choreographically and technically,” Hancock shared. “I know that our students are strong performers, and I hope that my work resonates with people — but to have it selected by a peer adjudication panel means that others also see and respect what my colleagues and students are doing outside of the Stockton community. It confirms that what the Stockton Dance program is doing is professional-level work.” 

Below, Hancock reflects on the experience for students, the collaborative process with Pittenger, and what it means to see the work continue on a national stage. 

This work has evolved from its original commission to being restaged with Stockton students. How has the piece changed or taken on new meaning through that process? 

My colleague Caitlin Quinn Pittenger, who developed the work with me, noted how this cast of Stockton students has solidified the vision we had for the original commission by Nickerson-Rossi Dance in Palm Springs.  

They've elevated the work, made it even more elegant and polished, while also bringing their unique personalities to each role — which was an integral part of the original commission as well. To see them inhabit each role so fully speaks to the maturity of our current Stockton dancers, and it makes me incredibly proud of all their hard work. 

What was it like for your students to perform in a professional, juried festival setting? What do you hope they took away from that experience? 

They all mentioned how exciting it was to feel like a professional — to be on tour and to experience firsthand the exact demands of a professional performance environment. This is quite different from the scholastic setting of our productions at Stockton, where we have a full week of tech rehearsals to prepare.  

For this event, the students had a half hour tech in the space before the performance. In the professional world, you don't get a slow build-up — you must be ready. And our Stockton students both recognized that difference and rose to the challenge. I hope they took away that the skillset they've honed at Stockton will allow them to translate into a professional career with ease, and that all the hard work is worth it once you get to perform and tour at this level. 

Can you talk a bit about your collaboration with Professor Caitlin Quinn Pittenger and how that partnership shaped the work? 

I have known Caitlin for nearly twenty years — we first met in graduate school and even shared our master's thesis concert together. But we had never directly collaborated before, so this was the first time we were working together to make something.  

I think if you know our work individually, you can see that this is a true collaboration. It doesn't look exactly like her work, nor exactly like mine. It is genuinely a hybrid, and former students who saw it at the Spring Dance Concert remarked that they could see us both in the choreography. 

What does it mean to you to see a work like this continue beyond its original performance and reach new audiences? 

Dance is such an ephemeral art that to see your work continue beyond a premiere is always deeply satisfying. This project reminded me that it's okay to revisit dances — there is often pressure from the field, and from the fact that this is my research, to continuously be developing something new. But especially with strong work, it's a shame not to let it return, to revisit your choices, and to refine what's already there.  

Getting to reach new audiences is the best part of the Small Plates Choreography Festival. We’ll have another opportunity to do just that when we perform the work again during the Dance New Jersey Show Up and Dance performance at 5 p.m. Sunday, March 29, at the Stockton Performing Arts Center. 

What's something about this experience that might surprise people? 

It might surprise people that the students chose to give up part of their spring break to perform this work. While it doesn't surprise me — I know how much they value their dancing — most students want to head somewhere warm and sit on a beach.  

I was also glad that our students made the most of being near Washington, D.C., and on our final travel day we visited the National Gallery of Art together as a group. That kind of adventuring matters. It fuels creativity, and it will show up in their art. 

This program was supported by the School of Arts and Humanities Microgrant. 

Reported by Mandee McCullough 

Photos submitted