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When Ann Wagner arrived at St. Olaf College as a first-year student in 1954, the institution was among a dwindling few that still strictly forbade social dancing on campus.

Yet by 1983, Wagner had helped St. Olaf become a groundbreaking leader in dance as a performing art, complete with its own major, department, and first-of-its-kind national accreditation. 

The transformation was the result of national and institutional shifts — and accelerated by Wagner’s tireless efforts. She championed dance at St. Olaf by skillfully harnessing opportunities, building alliances, and giving fledgling projects and programs the support they needed to grow. 

St. Olaf may have gotten a late start in appreciating dance’s value, but Wagner helped ensure that it became one of the first colleges in the nation to earn national recognition in dance through accreditation.

“No one person can start something from nothing,” Wagner says, with stereotypical Midwestern modesty. “But I was committed, and it was important.”

Wagner’s efforts are emblematic of a larger ambition for the fine arts at St. Olaf that continues today: The institution is one of only two colleges in the state of Minnesota that is an accredited institutional member of the National Association of Schools of Dance. And it is one of only three liberal arts colleges nationwide that offers fully accredited majors in art, dance, music, and theater.

Early years
If Wagner proved to be a singular force in dance at St. Olaf, her ambitions in 1961 were more modest: she just wanted a job.

Wagner had spent two years as a student at St. Olaf before family matters led her to move back home to finish her education at Augustana College. She earned degrees in physical education and history, then spent three years teaching in public schools. 

Still, she dreamed of returning to St. Olaf, so she wrote a note to Mabel Shirley, chair of women’s physical education. If a position ever opened up in the department, Wagner wrote, she’d love to be considered.

Shirley wrote her back almost immediately, and by the fall of 1961, Wagner was on campus teaching students everything from swimming to field hockey to first aid. While she taught folk, square, and modern dance as part of the women’s curriculum, the most buzzworthy news in dance at St. Olaf was happening on the social side.

St. Olaf had accepted dancing as part of the social program a few months before Wagner’s mid-1961 arrival. To say that St. Olaf was behind the curve in this area was an understatement: Macalester College was tacitly allowing student dancing as early as 1903; Carleton College permitted dancing on campus by 1919. 

Still, some Oles viewed the change with skepticism. President Clemens Granskou fielded letters from outraged alumni, while Pastor Clifford Swanson pleaded with students who attended school-sponsored dances to “demonstrate true Christian manhood and womanhood at all times.” 

Wagner only heard about it secondhand. “I was told the first dance was extremely well chaperoned,” she says dryly.

While this debate raged, the seeds of dance as a performing art at St. Olaf were being planted. Interest in dance was quietly growing, but there were few local outlets to support this enthusiasm. “It’s hard to explain how barren the local terrain was in terms of dance when I came in,” Wagner acknowledges.

She frequently found herself pulled in to help. A handful of drama students, interested in fine-tuning their physical movements to hone their craft, for example, invited Wagner to lead them in modern dance classes. She also joined a group of faculty wives who were fostering modern dance performance through the Northfield Arts Guild.

At the same time, the culture well beyond Northfield had begun to change — and Wagner was ready to capitalize on the shift. In 1965 the National Endowment for the Arts was established by Congress. Not long after that, related statewide organizations, such as the Minnesota State Arts Council (now Board) began expanding their focus.

Within a year or two, Wagner was collaborating with Carleton faculty members to secure grants from these organizations to introduce a more vibrant dance scene to Northfield. “Before then, there had been no performances, nothing,” she says. “And suddenly, we could have a professional company from New York come on campus to perform, teach classes, and visit students.” 

Students soaked it all up — and soon, with the help of Wagner, they were helping push the boundaries of dance at St. Olaf even further.

Accelerating change
In 1969 Wagner founded the Modern Dance Group. Students began performing regularly at the college’s homecoming concerts, in spring concerts, and even — at the invitation of then-St. Olaf Choir Conductor Kenneth Jennings ’50 — in the Christmas Festival. Wagner shakes her head at the memory. “To have women up on the stage in black leotards showing their body — at the Christmas concert? How dare we?” she asks rhetorically. 

The results were not necessarily beloved. “I am sure Ken Jennings received some letters of protest,” she says. But Wagner didn’t let up.

In 1972, as the Vietnam War raged, she played an instrumental role in helping bring the Modern Dance Group to Washington, D.C. — alongside the St. Olaf Chapel Choir and a student brass-percussion ensemble — to perform an expression for peace in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. Dell Grant ’73 choreographed the dance sequence to accompany De Profundis, a musical “prayer for peace” composed by Kurt Westerberg ’72.

A year later, Wagner supported the senior performance of student choreographer and art major Grant, who created the first campus dance recital with all Black students. At the same time, as a result of a student petition, academic dean William Nelsen gave Wagner permission to hire Toni Sostek, who taught ballet at Carleton, to teach ballet, tap, and jazz at St. Olaf.

Dance was earning increasing recognition and respect internally. Wagner was granted a leave to pursue a Ph.D., and Susan Bauer (now associate professor emerita of fine arts) was hired as her leave replacement. Bauer continued to push the college’s work forward by expanding the Modern Dance Group to become the St. Olaf Dance Company, and developing a second performing group, the Apprentice Company. In addition, classes in ballroom dance, taught by Axel Bundgaard in the Physical Education Department, were enormously popular. Renaissance Dance, taught by Marian Walker of the Music Department, added a unique dimension to the program.

By 1978, interest in dance at St. Olaf was at an all-time high. Wagner and Bauer had brought new expertise and energy to the program, and Nelsen came to the pair with a question: What should dance be at St. Olaf? Wagner and Bauer didn’t hesitate to say that it should be a department and a major.

The work to develop a major and a department would be enormous, and faculty interest in supporting a new major and department was anything but certain. At least one member of the Religion Department had stopped talking with Wagner after a single dance performance in the chapel. 

During the December 1978 faculty meeting, the proposal for a new dance major and department unexpectedly won endorsement from Harold Ditmanson, a respected and long-time religion professor.

“He stood and said, in his quiet way, ‘Well, I think this program has proved itself,’ and then sat down,” Wagner says, still moved by the moment. The vote was called for. The motion to create the new department and major was passed with a voice vote.

The Dance Department officially began in September of 1979.

From institutional to national recognition
Nationally, more change was afoot. The development of the National Association of Schools of Dance (NASD), an accreditation body for dance, was just getting off the ground. Wagner was invited to Washington, D.C., to help develop standards for the rigorous process of accreditation. 

It was an eye-opening experience. Through her work with NASD, Wagner gained insight on what was happening in dance programs around the nation, from college programs to professional studio schools like the Joffrey Ballet. 

By the time the fledgling association was ready to evaluate the first group of schools for accreditation, Wagner had made up her mind that St. Olaf would try to earn its place in the inaugural group of accredited institutions. It would cement the department’s reputation, even as Wagner sometimes second-guessed it herself. “I was always asking, What should we be doing? Are we good enough?” she recalls.

The accreditation process answered the question definitively: Yes, they were. In 1983 St. Olaf became one of just three institutions nationwide, and the first in Minnesota, to have a Dance Department with a major accredited by NASD.

It was a crowning achievement in a remarkable two-decade transformation for dance at St. Olaf, but Wagner wasn’t done yet. She would spend the next two decades building, strengthening, and broadening the department’s scope and depth.

Before she retired in 1999, she had one final goal: to leave the department thriving under capable successors. She did that in part by hiring Professor of Dance Janice Roberts in 1994. Roberts soon proved that she could and should be leading the department.

“She was a good administrator, teacher, performer — and she was good with the students,” says Wagner. “She made improvements in the curriculum and the major. Not least, she actively helped to plan the transformation of the former student center into the current Center for Art and Dance. I’m really proud to have hired people who could move the program forward.”

Since 2016 the department has been chaired by Heather Klopchin, the Oscar and Gertrude Boe Overby Distinguished Professor of Dance, who continues to expand the ambitions of the department.

As Wagner looks back at the arc of her career, and the dance program at St. Olaf, she is both proud of what that trajectory looked like — and mindful of all of the people and factors that contributed to that success. “There were so many people supporting it, and it started modestly. There were struggles, but there was never a point where I thought ‘Oh heck, this isn’t worth it.’ I just took the next step, and the next step.”

Rhythm and Moves
Today’s Dance Department at St. Olaf maintains the ambitious DNA that marked its initial founding and growth. This includes a vibrant range of styles, teaching approaches, and opportunities, says Klopchin.

Offerings include movement-intensive classes in contemporary modern, West African, hip hop, ballroom, and many other types of dance. Students can also take language-intensive classes that concentrate on dance history, anatomy, and choreography. Klopchin notes that St. Olaf’s commitment to dance both as an artistic practice and a community practice sets it apart from other dance programs.

Klopchin adds that students particularly appreciate the opportunity to forge their own path. Because of St. Olaf’s liberal arts philosophy, many students pair their dance major with expertise that they develop in majors such as biology and kinesiology. “We’re really able to tailor-make the experience for each student,” Klopchin says. 

Students also can take advantage of a wide array of dance opportunities beyond the classroom, no matter what their major. The college often brings in working artists and companies to teach classes and to set dance work on the two faculty-directed companies within the Dance Department: Companydance and the international dance ensemble Veselica. Both companies are open by audition to all students, and Veselica has showcased dances from more than 30 countries. 

As the program moves forward, Klopchin is eager to expand its programming in African and African Diasporic dance while also preparing students for a range of dance-related careers, including performing and choreography, dance administration, and related fields such as medicine and massage therapy.  “There’s so much that’s possible,” she says.