Maroon and White Renaissance

As director of the undergraduate performance studies program, Kattari oversees a comprehensive program where students and faculty study, create and collaborate across traditional artistic mediums like music, film and theater and explore how performance reveals itself in larger cultural rituals, like religious gatherings and sports. “Students in our introductory courses study basic theories and methods for their given disciplines, how to communicate about performance through writing and how to put the theory they learned into practice to inform their creative work,” Kattari said. “Regardless of their chosen disciplines, we want them to use the research to think carefully about how they perform and what type of impact they want to have on audiences.”

In expanding the program alongside the rest of PVFA, she touted its new minors in devised theatre and music technology as additional opportunities for students to supplement their scholarly and artistic pursuits. The program caters to students who create and study all types of performance, providing the foundation for diverse career paths. Kattari said its graduates leave Aggieland with critical thinking and presentation skills they can also apply in arts administration, technical production, journalism and law. “There’s real value in learning to think consciously about the world around you and how to effectively communicate within it,” she said. “And once you’ve honed those skills, they follow you wherever you go.”

Dance Science 

Carisa Armstrong 

As one of the oldest known forms of human expression, dance continues to enrapture audiences across the globe. Conveying physical performance, cultural lineage and emotional resonance, the art form is both widely accessible and often awe-inspiring. But dancing’s expressive beauty can take a toll on professional performers. As Carisa Armstrong pointed out, dancers often push their bodies to their limits in pursuit of the perfect routine, leading to debilitating injuries that threaten to end their careers for good. “Since many dancers aren’t trained to understand their body’s biomechanics or limitations, they don’t know how to push themselves without risking their health,” she said. 
 

In overseeing the dance science program, Armstrong teaches students how performers from diverse dancing traditions can safely elevate their performances through hands-on experiences. She compares her budding field of study to sports science, which revolutionized athletics by enabling athletes to train and compete more effectively by disseminating research-backed techniques. “But dance is unique,” she said. “It emphasizes creativity, athleticism and aesthetics all at once. In football, it doesn’t matter how the wide receiver looks catching the ball as long as he secures it in bounds. But dancers are often portraying a story and performing perfectly in sync.” 

Before it was absorbed into PVFA, dance science was housed under the kinesiology and sport management department owing to its focus on muscle activation and physiological science. “We want to instill best practices in students so that, if they go on to teach dance or become performers themselves, they can make informed decisions that will cut down on injuries and foster proper training,” Armstrong explained. In moving to the new arts-centric school, she said, the program will retain those research-backed lessons while enhancing opportunities for performance and collaboration with other creative students and faculty.   

Visualization 

Tim McLaughlin ’90 ’94 

When the Visualization Lab, or Viz Lab, drew in its first graduate students in 1989 with an interdisciplinary curriculum fusing art, design and computer science, no one on Texas A&M’s campus could imagine the sea change it would help ferment in the entertainment industry. More than three decades later, audiences worldwide have enjoyed dozens of blockbuster films and games with Aggies in the credits, and many graduates have gone on to work as technical artists at Disney, Pixar, EA and other big-name studios. In 2023, Animation Career Review ranked Texas A&M as the No. 2 best public school in the nation for animation.
 

To keep the program competitive, Tim McLaughlin and other faculty will soon construct a cutting-edge Virtual Production Institute housed in the new school in College Station and at Texas A&M’s upcoming Fort Worth campus. Traditionally, movies and television shows with computer-generated special effects might shoot footage of actors in front of a monochrome blue screen to add digital elements after the fact. But McLaughlin wants students to gain experience in a new paradigm, which film production studios are starting to adopt, in which real-time graphics, motion tracking and banks of high-resolution LED screens enable live actors and physical props to be combined with virtual environments on set.

Buoyed by a $25 million investment from the state, the Virtual Production Institute aims to train Aggies to be pioneers at the forefront of art and technology. While McLaughlin hopes to sustain the program’s sterling reputation in film and television and boost production in Texas, he and other faculty leaders are looking to shift its horizons far beyond the entertainment industry. “With the advent of real-time graphics, augmented and virtual reality, and other forms of visual production, we want to prepare our students to work with new forms of digital media in different industries,” he said. That could mean simulations that allow doctors and engineers to practice in a virtual environment, innovations in product design and manufacturing, and even a world where augmented reality mingles computer graphics with day-to-day life. No matter what the future looks like, though, it’s starting in Aggieland.

To learn how you can enable innovation and creativity through the new School of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts, contact Heather Sauber ’99 below.