BOONE, N.C. – Appalachian State University's Department of Theatre and Dance is premiering seven original dance works during the Fall Appalachian Dance Ensemble (FADE) at 7 p.m. from November 18 through 21 and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, November 22 in Valborg Theatre on the university campus. Tickets are $10 for students, $15 for faculty/staff, and $17 for adults and are now available online through the T&D website, as well by phone or in person at the Schaefer Center for the Arts box office.
The Appalachian Dance Ensemble, now more than five decades old, is a creative laboratory that takes place each semester for faculty and students in the Department of Theatre and Dance. Faculty conceptualize the dances, and students audition to choreograph for their peers, who are also selected to perform via an audition process. The original choreography for the ensemble is primarily modern, with influences from ballet, jazz, and pop culture. Dances range from abstract, to expressionistic, to rhythmic works of sheer physical energy. The result is a concert for all ages that celebrates the creative expression of dance.
The 2026 FADE program includes new works by faculty choreographers Taryn Griggs, Sherone Price and Sam Stone; guest choreographer and alumna Katie Carter; student choreographer Mattie Barnette; and two collaborative projects created by students within dance composition and choreography courses. Together, the works explore freedom and social justice, womanhood and feminine power, memory and nostalgia, grief and disconnection, and the ways perception and lived experience shape the body.
Sam Stone
Taryn Griggs’ "How Sad, How Lovely" is a choreographic conversation with the music and mystery of folk musician Connie Converse. Drawing on six tracks from Musicks—originally recorded by Converse for her family “with love and modest pride”— Griggs and the dancers have allowed themselves to be swept up and carried along by Converse’s haunting compositions. Along the way, the piece reckons with what keeps one anchored and what sets one free.
"We’ve Got to Have Freedom," choreographed by Sherone Price to music by Pharaoh Sanders and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, depicts individuals’ struggle within the tension between social and political rights. Drawing on the confusion and upheaval of the 1960s and the value of musicians’ work, the piece sounds an alarm and urges audiences to stand their ground, keep their community close, and fight for the life they want rather than the one they can only afford or are given.
Get ready for a dance experience that is anything but well-done—it’s "Medium Rare," a new contemporary dance work by faculty choreographer Sam Stone and student dancers that dives headfirst into the chaotic, nostalgic, and beautiful realities of modern womanhood. While building this piece Stone and the dancers considered feminine tropes, girlhood, and the experience of being women in this lifetime. The result is a world that takes the audience from cool girl realness to a pink-hued dreamscape, ramps up to a not calming down frenzy, and lands in a celebration of feminine power.
Invited ASU Dance Studies alumna Katie Carter presents Jane Doe, a work created in collaboration with the dancers and fellow student Louise Fullwood. The piece follows each dancer’s timeline of personal experiences with sexism in today’s patriarchal society, eventually igniting the feminine rage that lives within everyone. Built upon the feelings of inequality and injustice that women have faced at the hands of men for thousands of years, the dance cultivates an atmosphere of empowerment, drawn from the collective energy of women coming together.
Student choreographer Mattie Barnette presents rosie, a work about the disconnect and confusion of losing a connection once known well. Through fluid and sharp movement, the piece navigates the lingering impact of that experience, asking how something once intertwined became so disconnected, and sits with the quiet, confusing grief of endings without closure.
The choreography in Rapid Eye Movement was created by students in DAN3420 Dance Composition and Improvisation facilitated by their instructor, Chris Yon. This piece is an assembly of responses to class assignments and prompts that contended with boredom, the measurement of space, and the creation of parallel worlds, among other things. The students describe the mood of the piece as a fever dream, because the dance jumps from image to image with an urgent internal logic that doesn’t make obvious sense from the outside.
Student choreographers in DAN 4420 Choreography, facilitated by instructor Emily Daughtridge, present 600 mg, a collaboratively choreographed work that turns the experience of a migraine into a visceral study in movement and sound. Rather than telling a story or naming an emotion, the student dancers sought to create a vivid portrait of how the smallest trigger can become overwhelming and challenge ordinary functions. Through dual roles and contrasting movement styles, the piece explores both how a person feels while suffering a migraine and how others witness it.
Emily Daughtridge
The Valborg Theatre is located on campus at the north side of Chapell Wilson Hall on Howard Street in Boone. The theatre entrance faces the back of the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts on King Street. Parking is available after 5 p.m. on campus in faculty/staff lots and after 5:30 p.m. in the College Street parking deck near Belk Library and Information Commons.
A full listing of the Department of Theatre and Dance 2025-26 season is available at theatreanddance.appstate.edu. Directions and parking information may be found here.
*all photography by Lynn Willis
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About the Department of Theatre and Dance
One of seven departments housed in the College of Fine and Applied Arts, the Department of Theatre and Dance's mission is to facilitate transformative experiences for students and the public, which cultivate compassionate, creative, and collaborative communities through theatre and dance. The department also offers coursework for integrated learning through the arts to the general university student population. Its dynamic co-curricular production program provides exemplary theatre and dance experiences to departmental students, the university community, and the region.
About the College of Fine and Applied Arts
Appalachian State University's College of Fine and Applied Arts is a dynamic and innovative group of seven academic departments, bringing together a variety of perspectives, experiences, and real-world education to provide unique opportunities for student success. The college has more than 3,500 undergraduate and graduate majors. Its departments are Applied Design, Art, Communication, Military Science and Leadership, Sustainable Development, Sustainable Technology and the Built Environment, and Theatre and Dance.
About Appalachian State University
As the premier public undergraduate institution in the Southeast, Appalachian State University prepares students to lead purposeful lives as global citizens who understand and engage their responsibilities in creating a sustainable future for all. The Appalachian Experience promotes a spirit of inclusion that brings people together in inspiring ways to acquire and create knowledge, to grow holistically, to act with passion and determination, and to embrace diversity and difference. Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Appalachian is one of 17 campuses in the University of North Carolina System. Appalachian enrolls nearly 21,798 students, has a low student-to-faculty ratio, and offers more than 150 undergraduate and graduate majors.
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