Ann J. Sanders Shopbell Scholarship

Ann Sanders Shopbell has been a driving force in dance on the West Slope for 50 years. Following a career with the Chicago Opera Ballet, Ann received an MA in dance from the University of Colorado in 1970 and began teaching at what was then Mesa (Junior) College. While she initially taught dance classes under the kinesiology department, she made an early connection with Bill Robinson, the founder of the theatre department, and began choreographing for musicals, beginning a relationship that would eventually result in a full curriculum in dance as well as a dance major under the umbrella of the theatre department.

Ann developed and directed the dance program from the early 70s until her retirement in 2005. As the sole instructor for dance for several decades, Ann felt it was important to offer all forms of dance from ballet and modern, to tap, jazz and ballroom dance, which to this day differentiates CMU’s dance program from other university dance programs. A master of recruitment for the program, Ann likes to tell the story of convincing football players in the early 80s to perform as Russian soldiers in the musical Fiddler on the Roof, many of whom continued to frequent the theatre as audience for dance.

Active off-campus, Ann was a founding member of the Grand Junction Arts Commission, serving from 1990-97. She is a past member of the Colorado Council for the Arts and Humanities Dance Funding Panel and the Governor’s Excellence in Arts Panel. In 1992, she received the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and in 1998 she received the CMU Outstanding Achievement in Scholarship Award, unique for someone in the arts. In 2005, Sanders received the State of Colorado Gully Sanford Award for Distinguished Service in the Arts and in 2021 she was honored as a Legend of Dance by the University of Denver (DU).