World Dance
Julie Searles, director
The World Dance program seeks to provide the Wheaton Community with dance opportunities, exploring dance traditions from a variety of cultures found around the globe.
Experiential exposure to culture, through vital and dynamic expressive forms such as dance and music, enhances our consideration of and interaction with the fascinating choices people make as they go about their daily lives. Through weekly classes, workshops and special events World Dance contributes a significant dimension of diversity to campus life, to further intellectual, physiological and spiritual understanding of what it is to be human–alive and well at Wheaton College.
All classes are free and take place in the Ellison Dance Studio in the Balfour-Hood Campus Center. Students, Faculty, Staff, Administrators, extended Wheaton Community members are welcome!
Some examples of past World Dance program offerings:
- Middle Eastern Raqs Sharqi with Abeer Almutawa
- Contra-Plus with Andy Taylor-Blenis
- Zumba® Fitness with Julie Searles
- African Modern and Improv with Mekbul Jemal Tahir
- International Ballroom Dance with Ryan and Laura Kenner
- West African Senegalese Dance with Lamine Toure
- Capoeira: Brazilian Martial Arts with Mestre Deraldo Ferreira
- Swing Dance with David and Kate Liberge
- Ballroom Dancing with Ryan Kenner
- West African Mande Dance with Seydou and Issa Coulibaly
- Krav Maga with Master Garcia
- Raqs Sharqi: Belly Dance with Laura Matta
- Polynesian Dance with Laura Matta
- Latin Dance with Paraiso Latino
- New England Contradance with Matching Orange, Lucia Watson, caller
- Dance Improvisation with Mekbul Jemal Tahir
- Samba with Deraldo Ferreira of Samba Tremeterra
- Hip Hop with Lauren Grillo
Funding currently supported by Wheaton’s World Dance Program, Venture Fund, Senate Fund, the Marshall Center, Worldfest and the Helen Tobin World Dance Fund.