Meet the 2020/21 Season 21st Century Artist Interns

Each year, UMS and the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance pair students with an internship working for a dance, theater, or music ensemble that UMS will present in its season. In the 2020/21 Season, they will be working directly with UMS staff and Digital Residency Artists.

The 21st Century Artist Internship is a highly competitive program developed to prepare students for new demands that working artists face in the contemporary marketplace. In addition to generating outstanding creative work, today’s artists are also tasked with reaching potential audiences in innovative ways. This unique program provides real-world work experience and professional connections to help develop these skills within the context of UMS’s programming.

The 21st Century Artist Internship program is made possible in part by the Jay Ptashek and Karen Elizaga Family.

This Year’s Interns

Kristin Hanson

Class of 2022
Major: Dance
Minor: Performing Arts Management and Entrepreneurship
Focus of Internship: UMS Performance Playground

Kristin Hanson is currently a student at the University of Michigan pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance. When she’s not in the studio, she also studies Performing Arts Management and History of Art. She is currently President of Dance Student Assembly and is producing a dance choreography showcase for Arts In Color, an organization focused on DEI within dance. As a dancer, Kristin has been fortunate enough to train with Marcat Dance in Spain, BAIRA MVMNT/PHLOSPHY in Detroit, and DanceWorks Chicago. She has performed in original works by Joshua Peugh, Joel Valentin-Martinez, Robin Wilson, and Kelly Hirina all over Ann Arbor and Chicago. Kristin has also presented her own choreography at the American College Dance Association conference and collaborated with Red Shoe Company for Claude Debussy’s Children’s Corner Ballet.

As an arts administrator, Kristin has worked for University Musical Society as an Education and Community Engagement student staff member and has interned in the offices of DanceWorks Chicago and the Detroit Dance City Festival. Kristin has even performed as a multitude of princesses for the Southeast Michigan company, Crowning Jewel Productions. She is passionate about interdisciplinary collaboration and loves supporting artists through arts administration.

Catherine Moore

Class of 2022
Major: Choral Music Education
Minor: Performing Arts Management & Entrepreneurship
Focus of Internship: Marketing/Digital Artist Residencies

Catherine Moore, from Westfield, NJ, is a junior majoring in Choral Music Education, with a minor in Performing Arts Management & Entrepreneurship. She is a passionate advocate for diversity in the arts, and this is central to her work as a performer and educator. She currently works as a Communications and Program Assistant for the Arts Alliance, and as the Media Manager for Connecticut Summerfest. She loves to teach piano and voice lessons, run and practice yoga, and is a section leader at First Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor. Catherine is excited to help bring virtual arts programming to a now global audience with the UMS Marketing Team.

Sammy Sussman

Class of 2022 (currently on gap year)
Major: music composition
Minor: musical theater composition
Focus of Internship: Tarek Yamani and Spektral String Quartet

Sammy is a composer, bassist and investigative reporter from Bedford Hills, NY. Though currently on a gap year, Sammy plans on returning to U-M for his senior year in September 2021. As a composer, Sammy’s compositions have been recognized by the American Composers Forum, the Foundation for Modern Music and the National Association for Music Education. His music also received an honorable mention in the New York Philharmonic’s New World Composition Challenge. Recent composition projects include a full-length musical, “Diseducated,” with book, music & lyrics by Sammy Sussman and Allison Taylor.

As a reporter, Sammy has written for The Michigan Daily, Bridge Michigan and VAN. His investigative reporting has been featured in the Columbia Journalism Review and the Detroit Free Press‘ year-ending series “This journalism made us jealous in 2018.” Over the summer, Sammy began writing a book about his great-grandfather, an Austrian Jewish refugee who spent the year before the Anschluss reporting on the rise of Austrian Nazism for a Belgian newspaper under a Belgian pen name. Excerpts from this book will soon appear in The Detroit Jewish News and The Michigan Daily, among other outlets.