Dancing for young audiences
Advice From Experience
Ella H. Magruder
Ella Hanson Magruder, professor of dance at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, is the director of the dance education program and teaches choreography, modern dance, and aesthetics and dance criticism. Formerly a faculty member at University of Montana and at Ripon College in Wisconsin, she was a member of the Mimi Garrard Dance Company in New York City. She toured for 15 years with her husband and partner, Mark, in their duet dance company, Menagerie, performing for over 100,000 students and adults.
Her book, Dancing for Young Audiences, A Practical Guide to Creating, Managing and Marketing a Performance Company, is available both paper edition and as an eBook from the publisher, McFarland Press (Jefferson, North Carolina and London), and on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and other online sites. The book draws on Mark and Ella's many years of performing and touring. It includes a section of interviews with company directors from South Africa, London, the Netherlands and Canada in addition to other companies from around the United States. Ella finalized her work on this book project while in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Ella's recent dance performance projects include choreography with the music of celebrated Taiwanese female classical composer Lu Yun. Ella and Mark (head of the dance program at Sweet Briar College) both created works to Yun's haunting music after visiting Taipei and meeting Yun during a dance and the Child international conference there.
Ella's family history is filled with stories of the past. Another piece she recently created is a dance drama called Race Relations; Tusculum's Ghosts. This work is based on one of her family stories and on local oral history and research about the forbidden relationship between a Virginia physician, Dr. Sydney Fletcher, and an African American woman, Harriet (Henrietta) Edwards during the time after the American Civil War.
Ella and Mark live in the beautiful rural county of Amherst in a house that Mark built. They enjoy rock collecting and gardening; and have numerous pets including dogs, cats and koi. They love to hike with their two big dogs in the nearby foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Mark and Ella have two adult children: their daughter Mia, a filmmaker; and their son Conan, a high school history teacher.
Mark M. Magruder
Mark Magruder is a Professor of dance and head of the dance department at Sweet Briar College. Mark and his wife Ella have performed for over 100,000 children and adults in over 1000 performances through the sponsorship of the Virginia Commission for the Arts with their dance company Menagerie.
Mark's work has been reviewed in The New York Times and The Washington Post. He has danced, taught and shown video dance internationally. Mark danced in the companies of Shirley Mordine in Chicago, Beverly Blossom, and Mimi Garrard of New York City. Recently, Mark was in a pick up company for Not About Iraq by Victoria Marks. Mark has a BFA from the University of Illinois and a MA from California State University.
Mark also plays a number of instruments. His music is available on iTunes and Amazon under Mark Magruder Yoga Dreams. He enjoys researching dance in Paleolithic caves.
Menagerie Dance Company
Menagerie Dance Company was a duet dance company that toured programs for general audiences in theaters and youth in school assembly programs and lecture demonstrations. The company performed primarily in Virginia and but also in Maryland, New Jersey and New York from 1985-2000. Mark and Ella Magruder founded Menagerie Dance Company in 1984 and incorporated as a non-profit in 1985. During its 15-year full time touring schedule, Menagerie performed for over 100,000 people throughout the region.
Mark and Ella danced with the Mimi Garrard Dance Company in NYC, after they graduated from the University of Illinois and began performing their own duet concerts 1977. An early review of their work by Don McDonagh in the New York Times gave them their first official recognition and they began a career of duet and solo work that would last for several decades. They left NYC and completed an arts residency in Wisconsin schools 1978-80 under the sponsorship of the Wisconsin Arts Board and The Green Giant Corporation, while sharing a job teaching modern dance at Ripon College in Wisconsin.
From 1980-84, they taught at the University of Montana and performed duet concerts in Chicago, NYC and Washington D.C. where Pamela Sommers of The Washington Post noted in a positive review of their performance at The Dance Place that it was unusual to find married couples working together in the performing arts and compared them to actors Anne Jackson and Eli Wallach, actors who shared professional and private lives together.
In 1984 they moved to Virginia, Ella's native state. There they created Menagerie and joined other artists sponsored by Virginia Commission for the Arts. The VCA awarded them touring grants from 1985-2000 for outreach into schools across Virginia. Success came steadily in the form of bookings and media attention. In 1985 the Magruders also began a shared professorship at Sweet Briar College while building and touring their duet company, Menagerie.
