Landscape architecture, album release in Schenk’s future
Fourth-year Echols Scholar Braelyn Schenk (American Studies, Dance minor) developed her love of the arts growing up in Cleveland. Her family took advantage of the wide range of performance opportunities and other creative outlets available to her as a home-schooled student in dance studios, drama classrooms and the city’s theatre district. After moving to the Charlottesville area for her high school years, Schenk flourished at Monticello High School, where she won the public school’s Pride Award for student of the year.
Her childhood training as a performer, followed by her engagement with every facet of her high school’s theatre department, sparked Schenk’s desire to combine her passion for acting, singing, dancing and choreography with community service. As one of George Sampson’s Arts Administration students, she served as his “go-to” intern working behind the scenes to publicize and produce a 2016 artist-in-residence program for a jazz ensemble. Sampson called it one of the most successful residencies in the 20-plus years he’s been at UVA.
“Of all the students I have used from the 2,500 I have taught over 11 years,” Sampson said of Schenk last year, “she is among the top two as a solid colleague, as well as a creative, entrepreneurial partner.”
Schenk also is a J. Sanford Miller Family Art Scholar, and in recent semesters, she has gravitated to the work of postmodern dance pioneer Anna Halprin, and her late husband, landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. Her research plans include meeting and studying under Anna Halprin, while visiting some of the designed landscapes by her late husband. The Echols Scholars Program awarded her an Ingrassia Family Research Grant to support her fourth-year research. As she continues to perform and study the arts, she is also taking a graduate-level, community-based workshop course focused on her hometown of Scottsville, Virginia, taught by the School of Architecture’s Andrew Johnston, who calls Schenk “one of the most inventive and interdisciplinary students I have taught in 20 years teaching.”
Schenk says that being an Echols Scholar has offered her a unique opportunity to explore her twin callings as a dancer and historian. Following graduation, she plans to continue pursuing my passion for movement practices and the historical infrastructure of America's built environment, through extensive travel and graduate school for landscape architecture and design thinking. As a budding singer and songwriter, she also hopes to eventually record and release an album.
“The Echols program has been a choice pairing with my time as a Miller Arts Scholar,” she says. “I am grateful for the courage and capability the Echols program has inspired and fostered in me these past years. It has been an integral factor in helping me find, seek and synthesize my passions for the present and future.”