Related story: UC Davis Athletics, El Macero Country Club and Troon Golf to dedicate the John and Diane Watson Short Game Training Center, Sunday (Nov. 9).

•••

By Dateline staff

In two naming ceremonies over the next week, UC Davis is honoring the late dancer and choreographer Della Davidson, a professor here from 2001 until her death in March 2012, and Muriel Gill, an alumna and accomplished equestrian.

The Davidson celebration is scheduled for Friday (Nov. 7), starting with a dance workshop, free and open to the public, from 1 to 4 p.m. in the dance studio in Nelson Hall. The hall, formerly the University Club, sits across the arboretum waterway from the Department of Theatre and Dance.

The dedication ceremony, also open to the public, will be from 5 to 6 p.m. in the same studio — which will thereafter be known as the Della Davidson Performance Studio.

“She loved the space and it was her creative home on campus,” said Jon Rossini, chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance.

Davidson established the department’s Sideshow Physical Theatre, and played an important role in developing the interdisciplinary Master of Fine Arts program in theater and dance.

She created more than 40 works and received many awards, including the Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography and the North American Award for Choreography.

She started her career as a ballet dancer in New York, then moved into modern dance and choreography, earning a Master of Arts degree from the University of Arizona. She became associate director of the San Francisco Moving Company in 1983 and started the Della Davidson Dance Company in 1986.

Her dances have a strong narrative content, merging the physical form of dance with elements of theater. Many of her pieces evoked women’s strength, physicality and sensuality, and tackled gender stereotypes.

“To watch one of her dance pieces was like watching a dream, full of emotion and power,” Rossini said.

Among Davidson’s best known works are Night Stories: The Eva Luna Project, based on Isabel Allende’s book The Stories of Eva Luna; and The Weight of Memory, another product of her longtime collaboration with the Moving Company’s Ellen Bromberg.

Rossini described Davidson as “an expert mentor who inspired and guided a whole new generation of choreographers and dancers, many of whom now have their own companies.”

Eric Kupers danced with Davidson’s company in the 1990s and later studied with her while earning his M.F.A. at UC Davis. “I consider her my artistic mentor,” said Kupers, an associate professor at California State University, East Bay. “She had this way of watching and listening to us improvise and rehearse that inspired a deeper sense of ourselves."

Kupers and three more of Davidson’s dancers and creative partners, Jane Schnorrenberg, Kerry Mehling and Kegan Marling, will lead this week’s dance workshop before the dedication ceremony.

“There was a kind of magic that arose in that studio,” Kupers said. “That space felt like her special temple. It felt like a creative womb.”

Besides naming the studio after Davidson, the Department of Theatre and Dance is creating, in her name, an endowment fund to foster the development of student choreographers, especially mature students, through artist residences, travel and training. About $16,000 has been raised toward a $25,000 goal.

UC Academic Senate In Memoriam: Mary Adele Davidson

•••

Campus Recreation and Unions is naming the Equestrian Center’s main barn after Muriel B. Gill. The center’s offices are in this 50-year-old barn, along with stalls for horses that need special care.

The naming ceremony is scheduled for Sunday (Nov. 9). More about the Equestrian Center, including location and directions.

The young equestrian

Gill and her husband recently donated $25,000 to the Equestrian Center and $25,000 to the California Aggie Marching Band; both are units of Campus Recreation and Unions. The dedication ceremony honors both Gills.

According to a news release, the donations have helped reduce expenses for student participants with financial need.

The Equestrian Center has allocated the Gill donation to introductory riding lessons, in keeping with the Gills’ hope of giving students the same kind of transformative experience with horses that Muriel had. The band has set aside its Gill donation to help cover the cost of members’ participation in the band’s annual fall retreat.

Sunday’s program, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., includes remarks from Laura Hall, director of Campus Recreation, and student speakers from the Equestrian Center and marching band. The program also includes a performance by the band — affectionately known as the Cal Aggie Marching Band-uh.

Muriel Butler Gill began riding at the age of 5, started formal training at the Oakland Riding Academy and, while still a young girl, became well known for her skill on hunters and jumpers. At 14, she was the youngest rider at the 1939 World's Fair on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay.

Within a few years, she was studying animal husbandry and working in the barns on the University Farm — until the Army took over the campus during World War II. She moved on to the University of Idaho, but not before boarding her horses in Dixon, where she would meet her future husband. Eventually they made their home there.

She returned to UC Davis and finished her degree in 1946. A lifetime member of the Cal Aggie Alumni Association, she attended many Picnic Days, football games, basketball games and other university events over the years.

She gave riding lessons on the Gill family ranch and started the 4-H Horse Show at the Dixon May Fair in the 1960s.

•••

Contributors to this report: Jeffrey Day, senior public information representative for arts, humanities and social sciences; and the Campus Recreation and Unions Communications and Marketing unit.

Follow Dateline UC Davis on Twitter.