Dance Alum Claudia-Lynn Rightmire is Asking: What Grounds You?

As an undergraduate student, Claudia-Lynn Rightmire* was interested in learning about EVERYTHING – so it didn’t surprise us that she is now a multidisciplinary artist working across dance, writing, theater, and visual art. It also didn’t surprise us that she recently decided to go back to school this fall – grad school that is!

We thought some of you might want to know more about how to approach the transition into undergrad studies and beyond, so we sat down to reflect and catch up to see what Claudia might say to the students sitting where she was just a few years ago:

Roger Williams University taught me what was possible. I was a first-generation college student, entering RWU incredibly reserved and without a clear sense of where I belonged or what I was even doing in college. I knew that I loved dance, but I didn’t yet understand what that could mean for my life or career, or whether it could meaningfully exist at the center of my education. Like many students, I moved between different majors and different ideas of what I thought I should be studying; all while continuing to dance because it was where my whole self consistently felt grounded and supported.

Over time, through my professors’ guidance and the relationships I built within the program, I started to understand that perhaps the thing that grounded me did not have to remain separate from the thing that I pursued academically. Dance could be rigorous intellectual work; Dance could be a full field of inquiry, a way of thinking, a way of understanding the world, a profession. Working with Professor Cathy Nicoli was formative in that realization. She helped me see that dance was not only a vehicle toward something else; it could be both the vehicle and the destination. Dance – in its rigorous, thoughtful, challenging, academic, political, embodied, and rewarding glory – could be my focus.

That lesson has stayed with me far beyond my undergraduate years. Since graduating, I have had the opportunity to teach and perform in many places nationally and internationally; and because of RWU’s Dance & Performance Studies Program, I have also learned to see the world and to make choices about my life that keeps dance at the core of my thinking, my teaching, the way I navigate the world – and the way I build my family.

I am very grateful for the technical foundation I received at RWU…I still carry so much of that training with me. However, the most important thing I learned was larger than any one skill set, technique, or course outcome: I learned that embodied knowledge matters. It contributes so much to the authenticity of the world around us…to the relationships we build with ourselves and each other.

There is something that only human bodies can do. Real people interacting with other real people, a physical art’s role in daily life…these things still make a difference in our world. This is why, especially as a new mom, graduate school feels right for me now. I want to help keep our society an embodied one that is still rich in human connection.

I am entering graduate study at the University of Maryland not because I feel finished with what I learned at Roger Williams, but because RWU gave me the confidence to recognize how much more there is to learn and the vision to recognize what may help the world be a happier, healthier, more balanced place.

My overall message for incoming and prospective students: You do not have to arrive at RWU knowing exactly what your path should be. You do not have to know the answers to all the questions you ask about your future self. As Professor Nicoli told me: It is in the doing that your path is formed. It is in the doing that new horizons unfold before you. Continue to find what makes you feel whole and curious – and do it, REALLY do it. THAT is the right answer for you.

Sometimes college gives you an answer, but sometimes it gives you the language to recognize and advocate for the thing you already knew mattered to you. The relationships I formed at RWU helped me understand that dance, the thing that made me feel grounded, could also be the thing that I chose – and still choose –to pursue. I hope all RWU students give themselves room to discover what that thing might be for them!

If you are a current or prospective student who loves dance, or would like to figure out how to stay connected to your body as your life evolves and changes, feel free to reach out by emailing Professor Cathy Nicoli at cnicoli@rwu.edu.

*Claudia-Lynn Rightmire is a multidisciplinary artist working across dance, writing, theater, and visual art. She holds an Honors summa cum laude BA from Roger Williams University and is currently a MFA candidate in Dance at the University of Maryland. Claudia-Lynn is an artist with Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, David Dorfman Dance, Andrew Schneider, and INSPIRIT Dance with Christal Brown. She has also worked with Third Rail Projects, NYC Children’s Theater, Kinesis Project, Cortney Andrews, Sarasota Contemporary, Moving Ethos, and others. Claudia has served as an adjunct faculty member at Connecticut College and as a guest artist and educator with institutions nationally and internationally, including: Peridance and Gibney Dance in New York City, East Carolina University, Roger Williams University, The Sarasota Ballet in Florida, and The Space Dance in Melbourne, Australia, among many others. In 2021, Claudia co-founded cs movement projects, a performance art company, with her partner, Simon Thomas-Train. Their work has been described by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune as, a wildly energetic, exhausting display of physicality, strength, and duality.