Performing Arts

Acclaimed Broadway songwriter Craig Carnelia spent two days on campus last week offering master classes for top Elon University students in the performing arts programs.

Natalie Marrone, adjunct assistant professor of dance, along with dance majors Michelle Micca ‘10 and Matina Phillips '10, donated an afternoon of their time and artistic talents at ItaliaFest 2009 in Wake Forest, N.C., on Sept. 12. Micca and Phillips performed as moving statues, a poplar street-fair tradition from Venice, Italy, home of the world’s oldest Festa di Carnevale.

Lynne Kurdziel Formato, associate professor of performing arts, just returned from the week long Music Theatre Educators Alliance International Conference in Fredericia, Denmark and Hamburg, Germany.

In August 2007, Taylor Trensch '11 began his freshman year in Elon’s music theatre program. One of the first people he met was then-senior Matt Shingledecker '08, who became his mentor in the program. Little did either know that two years down the road, they’d meet each other again – this time as castmates in the first national tour of the Tony Award-winning musical “Spring Awakening.”

Maggie Mial, a sophomore music theatre major, received the Gregory Hines Scholarship Award this summer during her participation in the Broadway Theatre Project, a musical arts education program for high school and college students held each year in Tampa.

Jeffrey D. Clark, whose career has taken him to theatre companies in Massachusetts, Missouri and North Carolina, has been named the new executive director of cultural and special programs at Elon University.