New scholarships benefiting student dancers are the result of collaboration among ARTS Wake Forest, its Wake Forest Dance Festival and a longtime local dance family.
For two years, ARTS Wake Forest has brought a day of dance to the Triangle and showcased a diversity of dance genres through the dance festival established in 2017. The festival’s organizers teamed up with the family of Elizabeth “Betty” H. Holding, one of Wake Forest’s first dance teachers and a former Radio City Music Hall Rockette, and together they founded the Betty Holding Dancers Fund in her honor.
“Part of the mission of the Wake Forest Dance Festival is to enhance and nurture local students’ artistic education,” said Mariya “Masha” Dashkina Maddux, the festival’s director and a former principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York City.
“In addition to remembering and celebrating the contributions Betty Holding made to the Wake Forest dance community, the scholarships were created to support and inspire aspiring artists from the Triangle to achieve their goals.”
The dance scholarships were awarded in the amount of $500 each to the first dancers during the second annual festival. The recipients were Dedreanna Scott, 21; Victoria Stewart, 21; Katie Harmon, 21; Lili Kramar, 15; and Laurel Dorn, 16. Holding’s granddaughter, Beth Moye, awarded the scholarships to the five local and regional dancers in September 2018.
Each scholarship recipient is using the funds towards pursuing dance as a career or training to enhance their dance education. Only students who participated in the Wake Forest Dance Festival and were enrolled in a dance program at school, college or university were eligible to apply and be considered for a scholarship.
Additionally, each scholarship applicant submitted a letter of recommendation from a professor or instructor and a minimum 500-word essay about how the scholarship would enable them to further their dance education.
Future interested applicants can find more information at www.WakeForestDanceFestival.org/scholarships.
The third annual Wake Forest Dance Festival is planned for Saturday, Oct. 5, 2019. Presented by ARTS Wake Forest in partnership with the Town of Wake Forest and Wake Forest Parks and Recreation Cultural Resources, the festival is supported by United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County.www.WakeForestDanceFestival.org.
