A look into the life of UTM dance professor

Marc Anthony said that if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life.

For Sarah McCormick, UT Martin Dance professor, this is an accurate depiction of how she has lived her entire life since the age of 5 dedicated almost solely to her passion for dance.

The passion that McCormick holds for dance was nurtured by two influential people in her life: her mother, who was a dancer and performed in Broadway, and Bella Lewitzky, who is a modern dance master in Los Angeles.

McCormick was born in Spain, but she lived in Los Angeles for most of her childhood. She attended Le Lycée de Los Angeles, where she made her start into the dance world through ballet. In her teenage years, she transitioned to learning contemporary dance instead of ballet because she says while she worked hard and was good at ballet, she knew it was not the right dance style for her. It was when she got into the contemporary style that she knew she wanted dance to be more than just a hobby.

“Because when I was in ballet, I was like ‘I’m never going to be a ballerina,’ but contemporary made me think, ‘I like this; I think I can do something with this,’” McCormick says.

She furthered her learning of the art form by attending University of California at Los Angeles as a Dance major. Throughout her life and while she was at UCLA, she learned several cultural dance forms, such as Japanese, folk, Indian, flamenco, African, Balinese mask, bharatanatyam, etc. The ones that she says were the most influential to her are flamenco, which holds nostalgia for her because she grew up with it, African and Balinese mask dance.  

“I’ve always enjoyed learning about how different cultures perceive movement and their meaning and why they dance,” McCormick says.

After graduating from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in World Arts and Culture, McCormick moved to New York and created her dance company, Tyndale/Sarah Pogostin, which is where she demonstrates her skills in dance technique and choreography. McCormick has also choreographed, performed and taken several workshops in various countries, such as England, Spain and France.

While McCormick was in New York, she faced a major obstacle in her dance career when her tibia, the shin bone located in the lower leg, broke. She had to undergo a four-and-a-half hour surgery, and it took seven months before she could even step foot in a class again.

“I thought my dancing career was done … that was a frightening moment in a dancer’s mind: that maybe that’s it, this is it,” McCormick says.

She was able to make a full recovery though and continued to pursue her passion.

Later, McCormick went on to get her master’s at SUNY Brockport, and it was while she was in the master’s program that she decided that she wanted to go into teaching dance. After graduating, she started out teaching at Brockport before moving to Maine because a friend she knew wanted her to come work for the University of Southern Maine by doing lectures and choreography.

Following this, McCormick says that she and her husband wanted a total change in scenery and decided to move to Tennessee when a job opened at UT Martin. McCormick has now been the professor of Dance at UT Martin for 14 years. She is the director of UT Martin’s dance ensemble, and she also coordinates the K-12 Dance Education Licensure Program on campus. She is currently the only Dance professor and teaches ballet, jazz, contemporary and choreography.

“It would be nice to have more diversity of cultural styles [taught at UT Martin], but I am only one person and can only do so much,” McCormick says.

As a Dance professor here at UT Martin, McCormick has had a major impact on several of her students.

Marlee Scott, a freshman Dance Education major at UT Martin, first met McCormick this past summer and has taken several of her classes in fall 2021. Scott says that she has dreamed of being a professional dancer since she was a child, and McCormick has had a major impact on her outlook for both her future and about dance.

“I trained for 15 years to be a professional ballerina and actually almost ended up becoming one this past March, but injury took over and cut my career short. That is when I found UTM and Mrs. McCormick. She has really helped me realize that I can still use my gift and passion as a job in the future as a teacher,” Scott says.

Alaina Harvey, a senior Interdisciplinary Studies major with a focus in Dance and Business at UT Martin, currently teaches dance classes in Jackson, and she first met McCormick in 2017 while she was still in high school.

“From the moment I met Professor McCormick, I knew that she was going to be the most influential person that I would have in my college career,” Harvey says.

McCormick says she tries her best to provide students with ways to think broadly about dance and different cultures, and she works to give students as many opportunities as they need to get involved in the dance world and to challenge themselves with dance.

“Describing Professor McCormick in one word is kinda difficult because she is more than just one thing, but if I could describe Professor McCormick in one word, it would be devoted. She is devoted to not just her students, but her work as well. Through all of the obstacles she has gone through, she has never let any of them stop her from dancing,” Harvey says.