When Reina Jones ’27 and Ellen Stewart ’27 met at Swarthmore’s dance information session during their first week on campus, they discovered a mutual desire for more opportunities to dance and perform. A few weeks later, they founded Ember Dance Company, Swarthmore’s student dance group dedicated to ballet, contemporary, and jazz.
For as long as either Reina or Ellen can remember, dance has been a significant part of their lives. Both began around the age of three, and by high school, they were spending well over ten hours a week in the studio. Over the past four years, however, their relationships with dance have shifted. As seniors, neither Reina nor Ellen dance as frequently as they once did, though dance has remained a defining part of their time at Swarthmore.
Despite their similar backgrounds in the art, the two arrived at Swarthmore with different expectations for how dance would fit into their college careers. Reina arrived knowing she would not major or minor in dance; instead, she initially planned to pursue film & media studies.
“I was ready for [dance] to take a backseat and to explore other interests,” she said. “But turns out, I dropped the film, and I kept the dance, so here we are.” Reina will instead graduate with an honors major in political science and an honors minor in history. Ellen initially planned to minor in dance, but ultimately chose to pursue an honors major in psychology and an honors minor in English literature, realizing she prefers to dance “for dance’s sake,” free from academic pressures and deadlines.
When Ellen arrived at Swarthmore, she viewed dance as a defining part of her identity: “If someone asked me to introduce myself, I’d say, oh, ‘I’m Ellen, blah, blah, blah, major, minor, and I dance.’” Over time, though, she found her other interests became just as prominent as her love for dance. “[Dance is] still something I love to do and enjoy, but it’s become less of my primary identity,” she explained.
For Reina, the change was less about who she is than how she spends her time. In high school, she would spend multiple hours a day just dancing, sometimes attending classes out of obligation rather than enjoyment. “It wasn’t something that I was truly enjoying every single minute of,” she recalled. At Swarthmore, with more competing demands on her time, Reina has had to become more intentional about making room for dance.
“I think I’ve gotten a lot more economical in the way that I view dance,” she said. “I try to be more productive … in a way that I used to not. It used to be kind of a flippant thing. ‘Oh, I’m gonna be here for the next two hours. I’m gonna be here tomorrow again. It doesn’t really matter whether this is the best use of my time right now,’” Reina explained. Dance is no longer an inherent part of her schedule; it’s a conscious choice that she makes each day. That change has actually made her appreciate her time in the studio more: “The only way for this to be a sustainable part of my schedule is if it’s an active choice I’m making that I like to do, and that is valuable in a way that another choice might not be.”
Although neither Ellen nor Reina ended up pursuing dance as an academic focus, both are immensely grateful for the opportunities Swarthmore’s Dance Department has given them to continue training and performing. Ellen recalled that the program stood out during her college search because of its accessibility to students regardless of whether they planned to major or minor in the subject. She was also drawn to its ballet offerings — something she didn’t want to give up in college — which, she noted, are “something that [she doesn’t] think [are] equally valued at all liberal arts colleges.”
A major highlight for both was performing “Proprioception,” a piece choreographed by dance senior lecturer Chandra Moss-Thorne for ballet repertory during the spring of their first year. They went on to perform the piece at Koresh School of Dance and Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers. The process was both a challenge and a bonding experience: they recall attending office hours together most weeks to break down steps and workshop sections of the choreography.
“It felt super important and super special,” Ellen said. She remembers feeling proud of how the piece came together and valuing the experience as an opportunity to learn to pick up choreography more quickly and precisely.
Reina noted that “3 Minutes Max,” a showcase of short, student-choreographed works, was another defining moment. It stood in sharp contrast to her previous training in a structured ballet environment. “I think it is almost like the epitome of liberal arts dance,” she said. “I come from a very rigid structure of ‘we’re gonna put on a full-length production. It’s going to be taught by this old Russian lady, and you’re gonna do exactly as the choreographer intended hundreds of years ago.’” 3 Minutes Max offered the opposite: a student choreographer only a year or two older than them developing an innovative dance. For Reina, it was a chance “to start letting go of the rigidity that [she] had been so used to.” “There was a lot of chaos,” she said, “and there was nothing I could do about it.”
In Ember’s first semester, the club offered ballet and contemporary classes in several styles. A showcase was the long-term goal, but putting one on required a lot of funding, which clubs normally receive only after being established for quite some time. However, without a showcase to work towards, attracting dancers was hard, especially since many were already committed to other pieces. The following semester, they organized Ember’s first showcase, featuring an excerpt from “Sleeping Beauty” alongside several student-choreographed pieces. It took countless meetings and a lot of scheduling, but it paid off. By the following semester, Ember had secured funding, allowing them to stage a larger showcase that expanded to include more contemporary and even hip-hop styles.
But as Ember grew, so did the work required to keep it running. Coordinating dancers, scheduling rehearsals, securing funding, and managing productions began to eat into time that Ellen and Reina wanted for other interests. “The administrative stuff was taking so much of my time that it was starting to take away from the reason I founded Ember, which was to get to dance and perform more,” Ellen said. “And I was really getting bogged down by scheduling and getting people where they needed to be.”
Last year, the founders began turning over some club leadership to younger students, Jeremy Weinstein-Sears ’28 and Kori Landi ’28. As neither of them are on campus this semester, Reina and Ellen expected Ember to take a break. However, Sarah Leidecker ’28, Heidi Meisenhelder ’28, and Rachel Fung ’28 stepped in to keep the organization running, bringing several first-years onto the executive board as well. Ellen helped Sarah with the transition at the beginning of the semester, including securing funding for the fall, but she said that they’ve since taken a very hands-off approach. This fall, Ember is working on a music and dance video for “3 Minutes Max,” and the founders are very happy to see the club continue, and they hope that it will be able to put on productions in the spring.
Looking back, both founders said starting Ember taught them lessons that reached beyond the studio. “As a student,” Reina said, “if there’s something that you want to happen, if there’s a project that you want to see through, go and get those resources, and don’t worry yourself with how small or insignificant you feel like the project or vision might be, because that doesn’t really matter. It’s about making your time at the school be the best version and most enjoyable version for yourself. I think, at the time, Ember was that for me.” For Ellen, she learned to trust others with a shared project. At first, she worried that students might express interest but fail to follow through on rehearsals and performances. Instead, she found she could rely on people and take a step back. As she put it, “your passion doesn’t have to be just your passion.”
As graduation approaches, both acknowledge the sadness of not being able to perform regularly, but they hope to still take adult classes wherever they end up. “I’m sad I can’t have as robust of a from-start-to-finish performance experience as I got to have in high school and through college,” Ellen said, “but you will catch me in the adult technique ballet classes, for at least the near future.” Reina shares this regret, and added that she is unsure how much time and money she will be able to devote to adult classes. With many other ways to stay active, she thinks dance may become more of a special occasion thing, because she still expects to seek it out when she misses “the art of dance, and not just the physicality of it.”
Despite their uncertainty about what dance will look like after graduation, neither Ellen nor Reina are ready to leave dance behind. Ellen values the mental refuge dance provides. “I don’t have to focus on job applications or essays due. I can just focus on dancing,” Ellen said. Reina agreed. “It’s one of the few times in my day where I don’t have a screen near me, and where I get to fully think about the environment around me and the people around me in a very particular way, and I enjoy that so, so much,” she said. “That is something I choose to come to, because it still has a lot of significance in my life.”
