Graduate Student Spotlight on Dani Schofer

Danica ‘Dani’ Schofer (they/she/he) earned their MFA in Dance in spring 2025 at the University at Buffalo. Schofer’s MFA Thesis project employed devised creation tools to restructure collective perception of the spaces that surround us. While teaching Open Modern and Ballet classes for the Department of Theatre and Dance (THD), Dani integrated social justice liberation practices to develop a pedagogy around radical community care.

While at UB, Schofer’s work was presented at the American College Dance Association Northeast Conference and The National Dance Educators Organization. Dani also presented choreography and music compositions at the Burchfield Penney Art Museum, Rochester Fringe Festival, and the Buffalo Gay Men's Choir.

Dani’s initial interdisciplinary research explored the translatability of dance/music practices through somatic exercises. Their additional research in Somatic Musicality through the lens of Dalcroze Eurhythmics (an embodied music education practice) was presented at the Dalcroze Society of America (DSA) National Virtual Conference in January 2022, plus at an in-person workshop in January 2023.

“The central concept in the Dalcroze Eurhythmics method is the relationship between music and body movement,” Schofer explained. “Dalcroze believed that students who are taught to appreciate music through physicality would develop a greater sense of rhythm, harmony, and melody,” Schofer explained.

“In addition to being a dancer, I’m a jazz musician and composer, so a lot of my work is about bridging connections between dance and music,” Schofer said. “I grew up in a dance studio and took classes every so often. I had a studio training background though I didn’t come from a performing arts high school or conservatory.

“I play flute, piano and I sing. I like to put voice in my dance choreography as well. While working on my MFA I focused more on creating compositional scores for my dance pieces.”

“Most of the ways I’ve been integrating Dalcroze has been teaching methods and other conference presentations on its applications to choreography and teaching. In the context of the Thesis concert, I had the dancers create rhythms through body percussions and interpretive gestures in different meters. The sound score that I collaborated on with Tim Gregor manipulated six-eight and four-four timing. When the dancers heard the four-four they would do certain movements, then switch when they heard the six-eight. It was a layered, polyrhythmic type thing, with one group doing gestures and body percussion to the meter while the other did a specific phrase.”

During the pandemic Schofer was an undergraduate at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA and discovered their passion for music and dance research. This led to the establishment of a dance outreach program at Buffalo Public School 45 as part of Dani’s graduate studies at UB.

“I ran weekly dance classes for the sixth graders at PS45 and then cast some of those students to be a part of my Thesis concert (alongside UB dancers).” Sixth grader Fatima Omar was one of participants from PS45 who performed.

“The program at PS45 is continuing because the goal was to create a dance education option for the students. I did similar work in Pennsylvania when I offered an extra class during the day or after school. Most of the students didn’t have a background in taking a dance class, but movement is a part of families and cultures, so many students came in with a lot of things to share.

“I do work based off on Naomi McCarthy Brown’s ‘Dance Pedagogy for a Diverse World,’ recognizing culturally relevant teaching practices, bringing student backgrounds into the space and creating games where students can learn from each other. A lot of things we did were dances they knew or social dances they liked, which we taught everyone. I also learned a lot from Urban Bush Women and David Dorfman, and from (UB Professor) Chanon Judson as my mentor. Three sixth grade classrooms participated at PS45.”

“The UB dancers in my (Thesis) cast learned some of the movement that the student (at PS45) explored with me, and the students at PS45 learned some movements that the (UB) cast generated.”

Schofer titled their 2025 Thesis project “To See and Be Seen.” “There were a lot of different audience interactive concepts in the Thesis performance,” they explained. “I used models inspired by John Cage and Merce Cunningham and others - working in that idea frame, with chance operations to change movement materials, though this wasn’t an improvised piece. The Thesis was mostly set choreography but there were different sections which were based off interaction with the audience.”

In 2024 Schofer’s “The Privilege of Safety” for the Emerging Choreographers Showcase was created in collaboration with the dancers, with music composed by Schofer. Schofer did not dance in the piece, which begins with ambient, somewhat dissonant electronics as the dancers stand in a circle. Soon they crowd and bump into one another before branching out into soft, slow, gestural movements, with occasional frozen poses.

This gives way to ambient keyboard strings. The movement is generally abstract, though some dancers appear to grieve and console one another. There isn’t much further physical contact among them until the end when they reunite into a circle.

Of the work, Schofer said, “It was the same question (for me) about what the spaces around us are teaching us. That piece was a collection of six different scenes or spaces, which the dancers made up. One was inspired by a grocery store, another by a modern dance class, and one was inspired by a walk in the park with friends. Then I structured the scenes into an improv score.

“Every dancer had a different reaction to their space. Some were overstimulating, some were peaceful, others frustrating. It was the question of what makes our experiences in a shared space? Then I tried to used sound to reflect the different energies they suggested. It was also abstract, so it didn’t have to mean the same thing to audiences.

“It was an interesting project because it really forced me to define post-modernism and also create a teaching moment for some of the undergraduate students about performing pedestrian dance since there was a lot of walking in the piece. (I did) a lot of teaching on how to perform things which feel more pedestrian, while still developing performance intention.”

Regarding the accessibility of Schofer’s work to the audience, “That has been a big question of my cohort (of MFA Dance students at UB). We’ve been asking that question together in different ways. I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but we wondered, ‘What do you want from the audience? Nothing? Everything? Do we want to be clear? Do we want to be not clear?’ I feel like for each of us it’s been a different journey and result.

“I think that there is a point of contestation for me right now between wanting to be clear and clarify and understand and share (with audiences), and wanting to be complex and honest and not needing to do that. That’s been a question for my research and for my performing self, my person. When are the moments I want to be very clear and present and when are the moments where I need to be experiencing something that can’t be, because we can’t always find that translation? I have a tendency to go one way or the other that doesn’t allow me to experience both, and I’m looking for that middle ground right now. I think that’s what I’m actually doing with my Thesis documentation.”

“I want to be presentational and aware that people are receiving something, so that it feels generous. Sometimes my work is very saturated, but I still care that it’s accessible, and I’m sharing it for a reason.”

“Being Apart” from the 2023 MFA Showcase was Schofer’s first work at UB. A solo piece, it includes a mash up of pre-recorded songs and a cappella singing by Schofer while dancing, including: “Get Happy/Happy Days are Here Again” by Judy Garland and Barbara Streisand; “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from Funny Girl; “Lost in His Arms” and “The Girl that I Marry” from Annie Get Your Gun; “Maybe this Time” from Cabaret; plus additional lyrics and melodies by Schofer.

“(The piece) was about musical theatre and my contested relationship with it. I kind of left musical theatre work because I didn’t feel connected and represented in the ways that I needed and didn’t want to experience the hierarchy of lead versus ensemble. I wanted more of a collective experience.

“It was a piece to explore things I didn’t feel I could necessarily express in musical theatre: the extreme release and fall, and moments of vulnerability with lyrics. The song I sang towards the back corner, I wrote myself. It was this deep, long study about how I want to express this way of identifying and how can I show different relationships to queerness and sexuality which can change based on what feels accepted and welcome at the time.”

Schofer appears in high heels, black tights, and a shiny top with white shirt and a men’s tie as headband. The look is somewhat comically glam but the work seems to swing between a sense of joy at something romantically found and schizophrenic gestures which break that mood.

Schofer loses a shoe along the way and continues to sing and twirl, seemingly between ecstasy and desperation, then sings into the shoe. The work is a bit like a Liza Minnelli Broadway number crossed with an emotional breakdown.

Pre-recorded audience cheers rain down upon Schofer until they drop to silence. Then Schofer removes their headband/tie and the movement is once again jagged. Eventually Dani drops the tie into the spotlight before falling back into darkness.

“This piece is less connected to my current self, but I still am grateful for what it taught me,” they said. “The original title was ‘Being Apart: Lesbians for the Stage 2023.’ I renamed it after the fact because I have a very fluid relationship with my identity as a queer person and have evolved past using that term for myself.

“It’s been an interesting kind of journey. I was doing a lot of work when I first got to UB on finding my own sense of expression, specifically when I’ve felt experiences that have suppressed me in some way. So I made a solo work the year before called ‘Blank Slate’ where I was reliving experiences of trauma. And then I made ‘Being Apart,’ this piece about queerness and sexuality.

Upon graduation in May 2025, Dani relocated to Seattle to pursue dance performance and choreography, certification in K-12 Education, and to begin certificate examinations for ongoing training in Dalcroze.

“(Seattle) was a surprise. I wanted to give myself space to find whatever artistry is in that city and I wanted to not be in the northeast where I grew up. ‘Y’know, we’re gonna find something different and then I’ll take the next step after I’ve learned what I learn.’”

Schofer said they would like to apply for grants to create work with groups there. “I’d like to do that after I establish a teaching and a class taking / performance presence. I need to be in regular practice, so one of my goals is to find the teaching spaces that work for me. The (Seattle) connections I could make so far are teaching kids, which I love. I also want to get connected with professional studios and apply for some adjunct positions. I’d like to be in higher education at some point, but (first) I’d like to spend some time in the field outside of academia.

“My studies at UB have really served me,” Schofer said. “I’ve been challenged to become a much stronger dancer and artist. I’ve really appreciated being in community and have learned a lot from the faculty, the grads, and the undergrads. It really benefitted me to get out of my comfort zone and see where ideas take me. I don’t think I would have been able to make the work I’ve made without my dance training and coursework here.

“I consider myself interdisciplinary, so I’m moving to relocate into a difference dance community,” they explained. “One of the things that I’m most proud from my time at UB is the pedagogy I developed with my students.

Why Seattle? “I love to make pieces outside and I love the nature there. The fact that it’s a larger city and there’s a lot of dancers working experimentally and with improv and collaboration (excites me). I know a little bit about the artists who work there so I think it will be an inspiring place.

“I love Buffalo and the connections I’ve made here, but at the end of the day I knew I wanted to find a new city. I grew up in Pennsylvania and have always been on the east coast, so I want to have different experiences before I might come back. When offers for teaching came in from Seattle I just made a decision to go.

“Primarily I’m looking at teaching and leading programming with K-12 schools there,” like the program Schofer established at Buffalo PS45. “That’s another reason for my interest in the licensure, in order to try to build more connections between professional dance and public school access. That’s been a passion of mine for a while.”