By Daniela Cacho
Born in Italy, grew up in Atlanta, and now names Cleveland her home, Sarah Morrison expresses her creative outlet by dance and also teaches this art form at Cuyahoga Community College.
“I came to Cleveland on a scholarship to go to Case Western for my dancing, it was a choreography scholarship. I moved here from Atlanta and I studied at Case. And while I was at Case I did the innervated graduate studies program. I got both my undergraduate and graduate degree at Case.” says Morrison, explaining her reasoning of arriving in Cleveland, which is now the city she has spent the most time in.
Morrison has been teaching dance at Tri-C for the past ten years but also has spent her time at other Ohio colleges such as Baldwin Wallace, Northern Dame College, Case Western, University of Akron, and has the opportunity to be a guest professor at a various of other institutions.
Within her time at Tri-C, Morrison has found that the college has great opportunities involving the Associates of Arts program, focusing on dance in comparison to where she has taught.
“I think that the faculty in the dance program at Tri-C are phenomenal. They’re all professionals in the community. In that way, it differs. The challenge is that we are all professionals in the community and there’s not one full time dance professor. So, I think that the instruction in dance and the classes that are available at Tri-C are amazing. If you’re a student at Tri-C and take a dance class you have amazing, amazing teachers. Really professional-leveled quality teachers.” says Morrison.
At the beginning of April, Morrison was anonymously nominated for an award presented by OhioDance titled, Outstanding Contributions to the Advancement of the Dance Artform. Morrison explains,
“I’m on The Board of Ohio Dance. I received an email that listed all the nominees and I saw my name and I was like, that’s interesting. And I saw the other people who were nominated and I was really honored. Because I was in a group of people that I respect extraordinarily. I mean really wonderful people that contribute to dance. I was delighted that I was nominated.”
Morrison teaches a wide variety of dance forms but recently has been deeply performing harness dancing (Aerial dance). In result, Morrison won Outstanding Contributions to the Advancement of the Dance Artform with great honor. She was presented the award by OhioDance at Ohio State University on April 28th.
Morrison will continue teaching dance at Tri-C for the upcoming fall semester. She will bring her professional format and advice to the classroom. Morrison shares,
“Really, you can’t just let anything stop you. If you’re really passionate about it you’ll find a way to make it work. And it is not always easy. In fact, a lot of the time it’s not easy at all. You know, you have to really love it but it’s so fulfilling. I think often that is how things are, the harder you work for something the more fulfilling it can be. Don’t let things stop you. If you run into a problem over here, just go look over there. And that’s the beauty of being an artist and a creative person. You can kind of have that brain space to go ‘well, that didn’t really work so maybe I’ll try this instead.’ I think being flexible and not letting anything stop you.”
