Inaugural Kenan Portable Internships announced

The Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and Office of Career Development and Community Engagement at the UNC School of the Arts are pleased to announce the recipients of the inaugural Kenan Portable Internships.

The new program—part of the Career Pathways initiative—allows rising seniors, current graduate students and recent alumni to design a creative, six- to ten-week-long summer internship with arts organizations or professionals. The 2017 recipients of Portable Internships are:

Yasha Borodetsky, a native of Riga, Latvia, who is pursuing a Professional Artist Certificate at UNCSA, will complete an artistic residency and internship with the United Solo Theatre Festival—the world's largest solo theatre festival—in Williamstown, Mass., for six weeks this summer.

During his residency, Borodetsky will create a solo show for the United Solo 2018 season under the guidance of Omar Sangare, the creator and artistic director of the festival, and learn the organizational and legal procedures that arise in the development and fulfillment of the show under Marcin Lipinski, the general director of United Solo. He will also conduct interviews with the artists of the 2017 United Solo festival to get their perspective on their work; gain ideas, inspiration, feedback, and advice; learn about their works in progress; and expand his artistic horizons. 

Borodetsky hopes that by expanding the reach of his musical abilities through collaboration with other art forms, he will be able to create a piece of great depth and meaning that resonates with the hearts and minds of the audience and delivers a message in a profound and moving way. He will bring the show to UNCSA in Spring 2018 as part of his final project for his Professional Artist Certificate.

Garrett Parker, a senior from Chapel Hill studying Contemporary Dance, will spend ten weeks this summer working with Seattle-based choreographer Elia Mrak and Sidra Bell Dance New York.

Parker will spend the first five weeks of his internship training, creating, and collaborating with Elia Mrak's team to help create a new work for his residency at New Jersey Dance Theatre. Parker will spend the next five weeks working for Sidra Bell—the artistic director of Sidra Bell Dance New York who is rapidly gaining an international profile for her work—as she teaches the "Movement Invention Project" at her summer intensive "Module" and starts rehearsing for her next world premiere. 

Parker says the internship will provide him valuable exposure to the professional dance scene of New York City and allow him to make important connections with dancers, teachers, and choreographers along the way. He will gain first-hand knowledge of what it takes to run a non-profit dance company in the City, as well as experience on the arts administration side of dance organizations.  

Nicholas Rich, a resident of Greensboro who received a master's degree in composition from UNCSA in 2014, is partnering with the contemporary folk band Stray Local in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Over the course of the summer, Rich will create a substantial composition approximately 20 minutes in length that will take the shape of a single-movement song cycle, but inhabit the sound world of American Folk, Old Time, and Bluegrass music. The experience will culminate in a professional recording with selected portions on video.

Rich says the internship will be a truly hybrid and collective endeavor, combining his knowledge as a composer and technique as a performer with the abilities of the members of Stray Local. Raised in a family of musicians immersed in the sounds of American folk and popular music, Rich has always had an interest in folk and popular musical styles and his specialty as a performer is Bluegrass guitar. This internship, however, will be the first opportunity he has had to fully invest himself as a performer and listener of folk music in any of his compositions.