Marcy Plavin, who won a devoted following of friends as she built �ֲ���ý’ academic dance program, often said that “modern dance is many points of view.”

From the very beginning of her work at �ֲ���ý, in the 1960s, “Marcy never felt that dance students should only get her perspective or the perspective of any single faculty member,” says Rachel Boggia, associate professor of dance. “So we believe that exposing students to a lot of different artistic perspectives is important for them to understand the field.”

A pause for reflection: Students appear in a mirrored wall at the Marcy Plavin Dance Studio. The dancers are rehearsing the dance Passing, celebrating the life and works of dance program founder Plavin. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Which makes it only fitting that the college has chosen to commemorate Plavin, who died in November 2016, by renaming, in perpetuity, its annual Fall Dance Concert after her. Known henceforth as the Marcy Plavin Fall Dance Concert, this event has always featured work by visiting dance artists.

“We choose them to bring diverse points of view about contemporary dance,” says Boggia, “so we felt that this concert really represents Marcy’s legacy in terms of the philosophy of the �ֲ���ý dance program.”

This year’s program, in in Schaeffer Theatre, incorporates work by recent visitors including Marlies Yearby, Vanessa Justice, and the late Trisha Brown, taught to the �ֲ���ý company by Trisha Brown Dance Company member Samuel Wentz.

The Plavin concert also features thesis work by a senior, as well as Passing, a tribute to Plavin by Boggia, dance professor Carol Dilley, and composer William Matthews, Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music.

Marcy and Leonard Plavin pose for a portrait at their Mountain Avenue home in 1999. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

A genuine �ֲ���ý legend, Plavin brought heart and mind to building dance at the college. Her dedication to dance — and to her students, many of whom remained close friends long after graduation — was fierce, deep, and irresistible.

Marcy Plavin was predeceased, in 2010, by her husband, Leonard, an avid photographer of �ֲ���ý dance. The couple’s children “wanted �ֲ���ý to do something to honor Marcy,” says one of those children, David Plavin ’77.

It was Boggia who “suggested renaming the fall concert, and I thought it was a great idea,” says Plavin, whose siblings are Stephen Plavin and Lynda Plavin Fitzgerald ’79.

Previewed in September as a work in progress, Passing will be a fully realized premiere for the December performances. Dilley, who succeeded Plavin as head of �ֲ���ý’ dance program and is on leave this year, returned to campus to collaborate with Boggia in creating the choreography for the 26 student dancers.

Dance professor Rachel Boggia. (Mike Bradley/�ֲ���ý College)

Matthews’ participation is striking in part, says Boggia, “because he did so many collaborations with Marcy over the years and was a big part of the dance program. For him to be accompanying this homage to her feels really right.”

As for the guest artists represented on the program, Yearby is known for her choreographic contributions to the Broadway hit Rent. At �ֲ���ý, she worked with students on a piece reflecting concerns about genetically modified foods.

The work has a score by keyboardist Divyamaan Sahoo ’17, who will perform the music live for the Plavin performances. A double major in math and music from India, Sahoo has stayed on at �ֲ���ý to work with the dance program as a guest composer and dance accompanist.

Justice’s piece on the Plavin program pays homage to the so-called analytic post-modern choreographers. Working in the 1970s, these dance artists minimized considerations of rhythm, musicality, and drama to achieve the purest possible focus on movement. Justice’s piece, set to music excerpted from Philip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach, “is hypnotic, interesting work,” says Boggia.

Justice has also worked with �ֲ���ý dancers on the Alexander Technique, an approach to movement that enhances mindfulness and aims to resolve physical tensions and inefficiencies. “It’s a chance for our students to understand the kind of subtle training that supports a long life in dance,” says Boggia.

“This concert really represents Marcie’s legacy.”

The third visiting artist, Wentz, has taught the �ֲ���ý dancers — or set on them, as dance artists say — Son of Gone Fishin’ Restaging Project, based on the original Son of Gone Fishin’, choreographed by Trisha Brown and premiered in the early 1980s. Wentz is a former member of Brown’s company who is now with Backhausdance, in California.

Offering senior thesis work is Riley Hopkins of Augusta, Maine. Presenting an excerpt from another Brown piece, Forêt Foray, Hopkins is �ֲ���ý’ first dance major to undertake a thesis in performance, rather than choreography. (Performances of the complete Forêt Foray, Boggia notes, usually include a marching band playing outside the performance space. For his four-and-a-half-minute excerpt, Hopkins will use a recording.)

The student performers — and, of course, their audiences — will experience not only aesthetic but historical diversity in the inaugural Marcy Plavin Fall Dance Concerts, Boggia points out. Alongside the new work on the program, Justice’s work looks back to the 1970s, and the Trisha Brown pieces are from the 1980s and ’90s (Yearby’s work on Rent also dates to the 1990s).

“So, in some ways, all of these pieces are giving the students a sense of recent dance history from an experiential perspective.”

Holding the microphone, Marcy Plavin acknowledges applause following a performance that concluded a three-day �ֲ���ý dancers’ reunion in 2015. Next to Plavin is daughter Lynda Plavin Fitzgerald ’79, at right, and dance professor Carol Dilley. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The �ֲ���ý Modern Dance Company performs “Appalachian Spring” in 1979. (Leonard Plavin, courtesy of Marcy Plavin)

Marcy Plavin, who created the modern �ֲ���ý College dance program in 1965 and retired 40 years later, stays in touch with many of her former students.

Marcy Plavin in 1999. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

How many? “Probably 100,” says Plavin, who keeps track of birthdays and anniversaries, and whether her former students still have dance in their lives. “We’re a tight group.”

In �ֲ���ý circles, Plavin is celebrated not just for the dance program she established, but for doing so with a warmth and inclusiveness that made her a legend among her students. On May 2, dozens of those students will return to �ֲ���ý, some from as far away as California and Florida, to perform in a reunion concert that will pay tribute to this remarkable teacher and friend.

“We’re bringing back my work,” Plavin says, “but we’re celebrating just getting together, which we always do.”

Titled The Art of Living Through Dance, the reunion performance takes place at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 2, in �ֲ���ý College’s Schaeffer Theatre, 329 College St. Admission is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-8294.

Members of the �ֲ���ý Dance Company perform “Power Lines,” a senior thesis piece by Isaiah Rice ’15. Performed at the 2015 Spring Dance Concert, the piece will be reprised in the May 2 dance alumni reunion concert. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The first part of the program consists of dances choreographed and performed by alumni, many of whom are still active in dance, as well as by current students. For the second part, dozens of dancers will present a piece — created during the day of the concert — based on 16 of Plavin’s favorite pieces from her time at �ֲ���ý.

The 11 works in the opening half of the concert run a gamut of styles, from ballroom to modern, from hula to hip hop. Choreographers include Marcy Plavin’s daughter Lynda Plavin Fitzgerald, who attended �ֲ���ý and is director of dance at Anne Arundel Community College; Michael Foley ’89, assistant professor of dance at the University of South Florida; and two current seniors, Leroy Barnes of Woodbridge, Va., and Isaiah Rice of Charlotte, N.C.

For the second half, “Marcy’s Legacy” will represent dances made at �ֲ���ý throughout Plavin’s tenure, ranging back to the �ֲ���ý Modern Dance Company’s public debut, in 1969. The dancers will be arranged into eight teams according to class year, dating back to 1970, and each team will choreograph and perform one segment of “Marcy’s Legacy.”

The �ֲ���ý Modern Dance Company performs “A Romp” in 1997. Dance alumni perform on May 2. (Leonard Plavin, courtesy of Marcy Plavin)

To create each section, the dancers will base their choreography on just the accompanying music, short descriptions and two images from the original dance — images taken by Plavin’s husband, Leonard Plavin, a prolific photographer who passed away in 2010.

“The dancers get together and in a few hours make small sections of choreography that all get put together into a big piece,” explains Carol Dilley, associate professor of dance and Plavin’s successor as dance program director.

Current �ֲ���ý undergraduates have taken part in previous dance alumni reunions, but they will be more prominent than ever in the May 2 concert as both performers and choreographers.

That’s significant. In a program designed with legacies in mind, it’s important to emphasize the continuity in the �ֲ���ý dance community, says Hannah Miller, a reunion organizer who graduated from �ֲ���ý in 2014 and is now a member of the theater and dance department staff. (A dancer herself, Miller served as stage manager for �ֲ���ý dance performances as a student, a role she will reprise for the reunion concert.)

The reunion is an opportunity for the younger dancers to “see how dance can be a part of your life even if it’s not necessarily your profession,” Miller says. “It’ll be great for our students to meet the alumni, see where our program has come from and think about how it’s much bigger than we are, and about how a relationship with �ֲ���ý can expand beyond your four years here.”

With an image of Marcy and the late Leonard Plavin in the background, retired �ֲ���ý dance director Marcy Plavin applauds dancers during the April 30, 2011, dance alumni reunion. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College).

In addition, Miller says, works like those by Isaiah Rice and Leroy Barnes — the hip hop pieces in the first half of the program — “are a true reflection of what the program looks like now. We are a very diverse group with different stylistic and cultural interests.”

Reunion organizers expect 90 or more dance alumni to attend the reunion. Some 70 will perform. Why such loyalty? Part of it is loyalty to Plavin herself. “Dance alumni all talk about Marcy and what she did for them, and how she brought people together,” Miller says. “The relationships they’ve formed with each other are really amazing, and Marcy is at the center of that.”

But dance itself, especially at �ֲ���ý, is a powerful unifying force all on its own. “The community that we make in dance is really strong,” Dilley explains. “What you remember from college, regardless of your major or who you lived with, are the dances that you made and the people that you made them with.

“Building things together is just amazingly bonding.”

While dance at �ֲ���ý dates back to the 1930s, the current program took shape under Plavin. Her remarkable legacy includes the creation of the student dance company, now known as the �ֲ���ý Dance Company; the 33-year-old, internationally renowned �ֲ���ý Dance Festival; robust visiting programs in local schools; and generations of devoted alumni — some of whom, like choreographer John Carrafa and dance historian Suzanne Carbonneau, are major names in the national dance scene.

Incorporating theory, technique and composition, “the dance program still has all of the courses that I got from Marcy when I first came,” says Dilley, whose own considerable accomplishments include the establishment of a dance major at �ֲ���ý, in 2011 — the first dance-only major at a Maine college. “That core is still there — we just have a lot more of all of it.

“And Marcy’s other real legacy is her inclusiveness. If she could get you in the room, you were going to dance, and if she could keep you in the room, you were going to dance for all four years. And we still have a very open door.”