“Total Immersion”

James Beaudry ’01 - Choreographer

by Karol Crosbie

Jim Beaudry works with Wooster theatre students, some of whom were learning dance moves for the first time.

A freelance choreographer and theatrical director based in New York, Jim Beaudry is associate director and resident choreographer at Timber Lake Playhouse in Mt. Carroll, Ill., where his work includes teaching and outreach in the public schools. He says he loves using theatre, dancing, and acting to help students of all ages become better learners. For example, he helped a sixth grade class turn a curriculum about Greek gods into a musical. And when he told a class of third graders that they could choose the subject of their musical, he dove right into their choice: head lice. The resulting production had an original script, a kid-pleasing plot, music, and (of course) itchy dancing.

“I’m interested in storytelling through movement and in the whole body as the instrument,” says Beaudry. “Musical theatre is the perfect collaborative form for dancers, singers, and actors. It’s total theatre immersion.”

Last spring, he returned to campus to work with theatre and dance students and to choreograph a piece for the College’s spring dance concert. Titled Rite of Spring, Left of Center; Pictures of American Provenance and Pretense, Beaudry’s work, an interpretation of Stravinsky’s classic Rite of Spring, is about American forms of ritualized killing, including war.

“I think all art is political,” he says. “If you’re going to say something, it has to be worth saying.” And the topics that artists speak, dance, and sing about don’t just come from a vacuum, says Beaudry. They come from a liberal education. “Artists need to know about things other than art.”