Dance Professor Sandra Neels Prolific in Choreography

In her spare time, dance professor Sandra Neels helps preserve the body of work of her career-long mentor, Merce Cunningham.

It was Cunningham who gave the very determined teenage Neels a start after she had read an essay by him in a book and traveled from Seattle to New York to take his classes. Now, Neels is repaying that support by spending the last few spring breaks and summers helping reconstruct Cunningham’s works for his present day New York-based company. Its work was recognized in a recent New York Times article.

“I learned more from Merce than from anyone,” said Neels, whose first loves were ballet and tap. “I still learn from him even though he is crippled by arthritis. He keeps working and has invented software which he uses now to choreograph.”

As a fresh young dancer, Neels impressed Merce and his company with her dedication in taking every Cunningham class possible, and working several jobs to stay afloat. By the next year, she joined the company on a world tour, thereafter working alongside artists Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Frank Stella who designed sets and costumes. “They were always around and I was so young, I didn’t realize who they were or how famous they were,” Neels said.

She performed with the company for 11 years before moving on to choreography and dance instruction in a variety of college and company settings, including the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

Neels came to Winthrop in 1990 and now mainly teaches modern dance, ballet, tap and dance appreciation. Winthrop’s dance program in 1990 had only seven majors but has now grown ten-fold.

The student dancers have performed at the Spoleto festival in Charleston, S.C., as well as at schools, conferences and festivals around the Southeast. Winthrop has hosted the S.C. Dance Festival twice since 1996. Most of the department’s graduates teach dance in schools in the Carolinas and Georgia. During the last six years, Neels has sent four dancers to intern with the Cunningham Company and a fifth may be forthcoming.

Neels continues to make her mark at Winthrop and in the region with her strong choreography skills. With nearly 90 works for Winthrop Dance Theatre to her credit, she has created pieces for the university’s Medal of Honor in the Arts event and for students from the S.C. Governor School for the Arts and Humanities, as well as the Brevard Music Festival.

Neels said she draws from everything for her dance ideas. “When I am choreographing shows, operas, etc., I must serve the directors’ ideas and the plot, but when I am choreographing on my own, I typically go from a movement concept and then find music,” she said. “As for the competition solos, some of which have won awards for the dancers, I choreograph specifically for the individual dancer to bring out his/her strengths.”

She has also written articles for New York’s Dance Magazine.

Neels, who was born in Las Vegas seemingly with dance shoes on, continues to dance and, like her mentor, choreograph prolifically.