RIT on TV News: RIT/NTID Dance Company

WHEC-TV (Channel 10) previews the upcoming production of "The Story of Sleeping Beauty: a Contemporary Dance Experience," producued by the RIT/NTID Dance Company at Rochester Institute of Technology. (Click upward pointing arrow at bottom right corner of screen for captioning.)

How do you take a diverse group of people with varying degrees of experience and get them all to move to the same beat? Repetition helps, according to Thomas Warfield. For the last 12 years, he has been at the helm of a unique dance ensemble.

Some of the dancers have had years of training. Others? None. Some can hear, others are deaf but it's those different abilities that make this ensemble unique.

This is the RIT/NTID Dance Company at The National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Director and Choreographer Thomas Warfield said, "I decided not to think of all these different abilities that people have as differences, so I really teach everyone the same. In our studio we have the speakers up in the ceiling and the sound comes down and the vibration of that sound, of course people can sense that. Some people have different degrees of deafness, so some people can hear low tones, some high tones and some can't hear anything at all but I believe there is a sort of internal rhythmic structure inside of us."

Right now, the RIT/NTID Dance Company is prepping for it's version of "Sleeping Beauty" -- think Tchaikovsky with a twist. Warfield said, "I've mixed jazz and hip hop and tap and all those things into the show."

And if the name Warfield sounds familiar, it should. The Rochester native is the nephew of the great vocal artists William Warfield and Leontyne Price. He played piano at age four and sang with a children's opera company at age seven.

Warfield said, "Initially I thought I'd be an opera singer. That was my goal until I discovered dance."

You can catch "The Story of Sleeping Beauty: a Contemporary Dance Experience" starting February 11. The show runs through February 14th at Panera Theatre at NTID on the RIT Campus.

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