Conn College Professor Lisa Race Presents First Solo Dance Performance Inspired by Her Late Mother

A woman sits in a chair. Music plays and she begins to rock—just a little, while remaining seated. Eventually she stands up and moves, stiffly at first, almost as if she were holding on to an invisible piece of furniture to steady herself.

Later, after the video of an older woman slowly dancing fades out behind her, her body seems to break free from the constraints of age. She dances as if liberated in a dream. Soundtrack: “You Make Me Feel So Young.”

Performed by Lisa Race, a talented dancer and choreographer who has long been a dance professor at Connecticut College, she created this solo piece in honor of her mother, Beverly Race, who died at the age of 101 in 2022.

The work, titled “Wonder/s,” is a celebration of Beverly Race’s life, but also an acknowledgment of her own aging and the beauty of her family. Race will perform “Wonder/s” this weekend at Conn College.

After her mother died, Race recalled, “I was very sad, and it took a while. I thought about doing (a project) that centered around her, and more generally, over time I started to become more interested in what family meant to me and exploring that through my work. That’s when I started thinking about, why do I dance? I think in (my mother’s) wildest, wildest dreams, if she could, she would have wanted to be a dancer on Broadway or something. That wasn’t an option, growing up in Toledo, Ohio, during the Great Depression.”

Race emphasizes that this project is not about mourning. It’s about celebrating.

“She spent the last 10 years in our house (in New London). … I feel like I got to know her better in those 10 years than I really did growing up,” Race said.

Living with the Race family—Race’s husband, David Dorfman, a renowned dancer, choreographer, and professor of dance at Conn College, and their son, Sam—during the last years of her life, Beverly Race had the opportunity to watch Sam grow up.

“David became her favorite artist. I made her eat kale and stuff like that,” Lisa said with a laugh. “But I think it really perked up her last few years. I have a sister in Rhode Island who would come over and take her to happy hour and stuff like that. She loved going out, which she hadn’t been able to do for a long time.”

Long before that, Race’s parents had lived in the same New Jersey home for more than 50 years. But by then, her mother had heart failure, and her father, Merlin Race, was struggling with what turned out to be the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The couple moved into an assisted living facility in Middletown, R.I. Merlin Race died in 2011.

Sam and David Dorfman both have cameos in “Wonder/s.” Race said that while Sam, 23, spent a lot of time in a dance studio in his youth and loves to move, he didn’t follow in his parents’ footsteps and go into dance. Instead, he’s a programmer.

Claiming your age

On “Wonder/s,” Race sometimes plays her mother and other times dances as herself; the song is about both Race’s upbringing and her mother.

The performances on Friday and Saturday will feature a variety of other works, and Race sees them as an opportunity to look back on his dancing career.

“It was an opportunity to reflect more on my own dance history and my own sense of: I’m getting older. I’m not moving like I used to. I decided that I was really going to claim that I was 65. I felt like I had to get rid of, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t talk about how old you are as a dancer or as a woman’—those things that we grow up with,” Race said.

“I’m so lucky that at 65 I still move the way I do. I’ve had a few joint replacements, so it’s not magic, but I’m really happy that I can move and move fully in a completely different way and look back.”

When Race says she’s had “a few” joint replacements, she’s not exaggerating. She’s had both knees and both hips replaced.

Recording Mom on Film

When Race noticed her mother was slowing down, she asked a fellow Conn professor, Rachel Boggia, to film her, with the idea of ​​making a little dance movie out of it. It turned out that Beverly Race died shortly thereafter, so Race was very glad they filmed it when they did.

With Conn alumnus Sydney Bryan serving as assistant cameraman, Boggia shot sessions in which Race essentially interviewed her mother. In another sequence, they filmed Beverly Race dancing onstage at the Garde Arts Center with Race and Dorfman.

The set for “Wonder/s” was conceived by Sean Hove, a dance professor at Conn. Race, who said they decided to make it very similar to Beverly Race’s room in the Dorfman house. So the set includes a real chair that Bev would sit in every day to watch TV and do crossword puzzles.

Hove also composed the soundtrack, using recordings of Beverly Race’s speeches and recollections.

Dancers Network

This weekend’s performance will also feature Conn College senior Bella Donatelli’s 1999 solo piece “Race.”

There will also be a duet Race created with Jennifer Nugent in 2001. Race calls Nugent a close friend and a New York movement superstar. In this version, the duet will be danced by Kendra Portier and Christina Robson.

Race had known Portier and Robson since their student days and enjoyed following their careers.

Portier, who teaches at the University of Maryland, will bring a quartet with her to perform at the Conn. program. Portier has performed with David Dorfman Dance, as does Robson, who also danced with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and teaches at George Mason University.

“I feel like teaching at the American Dance Festival, teaching at Bates, teaching in remote places in Siberia and Argentina, throughout my earlier career, I had the opportunity to meet so many people. It’s amazing how big and small this particular network of dancers is,” Race said.

End of chapter

Over the years, Race’s dances have become less abstract and more narrative, a shift that was partly informed by Dorfman’s work, which often explores storytelling.

In this case, the impetus for the work was Race’s curiosity about her parents and their youth.

“With both of my parents having passed away, it feels like that’s the end of that chapter of dance making, at least. I’ll continue to choreograph for students and create dance with David,” Race said in an email following the live interview. “I’m not ruling out doing my own work in the future, but I’m also trying not to feel (self-imposed) pressure and be kind to my body. I still love dance. But it’s not without spending more and more time taking care of worn-out joints and everything else, so it’s taking some time to find balance at this point in my life.”

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