B-Series hip hop festival opens at a Dance Center fighting for survival

Fifty-one years ago, the Dance Center of Columbia College launched a series of professional performances aimed at fulfilling one of the university’s key goals: to create a conduit between students and the field they aim to enter. The Dance Presenting Series looks different today than it did in 1974, evolving and fighting to stay alive every step of the way. Fifty-one years ago, hip hop was born, too. The Dance Center’s hip hop festival The B-Series kicks off Feb. 27, opening a spring season that also includes a suite of solo performances March 13-15 by Nora Sharp and Jenn Freeman, aka Po’Chop. And on April 17-19, Red Clay Dance Company returns to the Dance Center for the first time in five years, presenting a world premiere by Bebe Miller. It’s a modest lineup compared to previous years, and according to co-directors Meredith Sutton and Roell Schmidt, it indicates both practical and philosophical changes. “How do we transform how dance gets presented?” said Schmidt, whose previous roles include a decade directing Links Hall. “There had been such a wall between the academic side of the Dance Center and the Presenting Series side.” For decades, that made sense, Schmidt said. Grant and...