Featured Scholar:
Tara Burns
2002 - 2003 University Scholar
Mentor: Kelly Drummond Cawthon
College of Fine Arts
Tara Burns pursued majors in physics, computer science
and art before she submitted to the calling to be a dancer. “I didn't
choose to dance, it chose me,” she says. “I tried to get away
from it and have a more lucrative major that might make me some money
when I graduate. But nothing is more demanding than dance, and I think
I liked the demand. I just couldn't get away from it, it came looking
for me.”
Born in Leesburg,
Florida, Tara started dancing almost as soon as she could walk. She first
performed in front of an audience at age five, singing the Shirley Temple
classic “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” “I danced when
I was younger because it was my mother’s dream to take ballet,”
she says. “So she had me take ballet at a very young age, but I
decided to quit around the age of 11 and didn't start dancing again until
I was 15. That is when I first took modern dance and though I loved it,
I wasn't sure it was what I really wanted to do.”
After Tara graduated from Eustis High School in 1998, she became a physics
major at Florida State University but took dance classes on the side.
She transferred to the University of Central Florida, where she majored
in computer science. “I couldn't handle not dancing,” she
says. “So I also took dance classes at Valencia Community College
while taking computer science classes at UCF. Still not satisfied, I changed
my major at UCF to art and continued to take classes at VCC. At the end
of the year, I was a dance major at VCC and an art major at UCF, both
being very demanding and time consuming majors. After trying to do it
all, I decided that I had to choose.”
Tara realized she couldn’t get away from her desire to dance, so
she transferred to UF in fall 2001 and became very active in the Department
of Theatre and Dance. In the past two years alone, she has performed in
more than 15 shows, including this spring’s Miss Julie, Crash Test
and Freefall. She says she enjoys all types of dance and is trained in
ballet, jazz, contemporary and modern dance. “I will try my hand
at anything,” she says. “But I mostly enjoy very physical,
acrobatic modern dance.”
As a USP scholar, Tara researched how today’s advanced technology
can be applied to dance. She and her mentor, Kelly Drummond Cawthon, observed
dance through the eye of a video camera lens at venues in Florida, New
Orleans and New York City. “We experimented with using video to
show the differences between a normal, flat view of the dancers and viewing
them from angles you wouldn’t normally see, like behind the scenes
at rehearsals, to show more depth and dimension.”
This
summer, Tara is touring the country, participating in the American Dance
Festival and The People’s Touring Project. She will be back in Gainesville
in early August to perform Miss Julie at UF, before taking the show to
Edinburg, Scotland in mid-August to participate in the Edinburg Fringe
Festival.
Tara will graduate in December 2003 with a BFA in dance and hopes to have
her own dance company one day. “The future is a little hazy, but
I plan to move out of Florida to pursue dance in whatever way is available
to me,” she says. “I have yet to find anything that demands
more of me as a person.”
If you would like to see Tara dance, she will be performing in Miss Julie
at UF’s Constans Theatre on August 5 and 6 at 8 p.m. Tickets are
$8-12 and can be purchased through the University Box Office at 392-1653.
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