A Taste of Things to Come

The road to that first opening night took exhaustive work behind the scenes by many people, including Gretchen DeGroot Lenihan ’99, one of the founding members of the club. As a new student at Puget Sound, she was eager to find a creative outlet on campus where she could exercise her dance skills, simply for fun. Lenihan had grown up in Puyallup and, before coming to Puget Sound, she was enrolled in a rigorous, preprofessional ballet training program. Although she knew she didn’t want to dance professionally, she missed the art form when she got to campus.

“Puget Sound had a dance team — UPSwing — that performed at Logger athletics events, mostly basketball. But there was no outlet for varying styles or more theatrical dance prior to RDG,” Lenihan recalled.

“RDG co-founder Christine Adams Benson ’98 and I were both in UPSwing and in the chorus of a senior-directed play that involved dance in the spring of 1996,” Lenihan said. There, they met other dancers who shared similar interests, and it was this group who dreamed up RDG.

“All of us who came together initially were people for whom dance had been a really important part of our identity,” Lenihan recalled of those early days, “but we also knew we wanted to do different things in college.”

Lenihan still has her original RDG materials, including the tattered beige program from the first spring show, called A Taste of Things to Come. The welcome message speaks to RDG’s goal to provide campus with “a resource through which students of all levels would have the opportunity to teach, learn, create, and perform dance in all its forms.” Lenihan said the club’s focus was to “feed something emotionally in people that they really need.”

Lauren Sanford Setten ’11 said she felt that focus when she arrived on campus in 2007. She had been dancing since the age of three at a conservatory-style training studio in her hometown of Jackson, Wyo. Intense rehearsals and rigid coaches made her feel as if she didn’t have the skill to pursue dance long-term, but RDG helped shift her perspective.

Setten was encouraged to join the group during orientation week. She was sporting her high school dance team sweatshirt when a fellow student approached her and asked if she was interested in RDG.

“I don’t know that I would have shown up to audition had she not said something to me,” Setten remembered.

That audition went well, and she became the only first-year choreographer that year, then serving as historian and then vice president during her junior and senior years.

“I think what RDG did for me is it allowed me to dance on my terms,” Setten said. “It was fun again.”

Serving in RDG leadership roles also gave Setten the confidence she needed to forge her own path in the dance world, and she now owns a completely woman-run dance studio in Tacoma called Cultivate Dance Project. The studio, which offers classes for dancers of all ages from toddlers to adults, encourages people of all abilities and experiences to try their hand at dance. Like RDG, her studio is committed to fostering positive experiences for all dancers.

For Rae Kertzner ’26, RDG has been a space to try new things. He never took a dance class before coming to the university, but he stumbled upon a rehearsal during the spring semester of his first year.

“I walked in and I knew the choreographer, and she said, do you just want to be in my dance?” He said yes, and has been active as a dancer and rehearsal advisor since that moment.

Kertzner describes the atmosphere of the club as something that “feels huge,” adding that it appeals to people from all different corners of campus. Breaking into a group that is predominantly female has been an encouraging experience as well. Here, he added, there is no hierarchy, and everyone has a place on the dance floor.

“I think in general, because it’s less common to be a guy doing RDG, the guys who do it are uplifted to be there.”

Kertzner’s RDG origin story speaks to the nature of the club. No matter where student dancers are in their dance journeys, they are welcome to join in.

A group of student dancers — a mix of dance team members, theater students, and first-year students from a variety of dance backgrounds — glided onto the stage in the dark. The spotlight flickered on, illuminating faces covered in stage makeup. Music filled the hall and attendees watched in wonder as the dancers swayed to the beat and broke out into energetic dance, showcasing elaborate choreography. The song came to an end, the students slid off stage, and roaring applause echoed through the hall.

For the first time, Puget Sound had a club where dance in all forms, for all abilities, was possible. That joyful experience is still craved and celebrated by students today. RDG will recognize its 30th anniversary in the 2026–27 school year, and it remains the largest student club on campus, with more than 180 members. Over three decades, it has been a space where dancers, experienced or not, feel safe to come together, free of judgment, for the sake of their shared art.

Lenihan, Setten, and Kertzner all agree that RDG succeeds because it is a collective effort. A spirit of collaboration and genuine pride in each other keeps the student-run club afloat and appeals to new members.

Thirty years ago, setting up for the biannual show meant borrowing Lenihan’s family van to transport rolls of dance flooring to the concert hall. Today, there aren’t enough seats in Schneebeck to hold the audience, so dancers walk into an off-campus auditorium in elaborate costumes to start their shows. Despite this change, the important aspects remain the same: the sense of community among the dancers, the joy in the dance, and the thunder of applause at the end of the show.

All alumni are invited back to campus June 5 to 7 for a weekend filled with festivities and fun. There will be a special focus on those who graduated in classes ending in 1 and 6, with additional events for the classes of 1976 and 2001.

In addition, in honor of its 30th anniversary, there will be special celebrations for alumni who participated in RDG, as well as alumni who were orientation leaders from all eras of Preludes, Passages, and Perspectives; members of the Associated Students of the University of Puget Sound (ASUPS); involved in Ka ‘Ohana Me Ke Aloha (formerly Hui O Hawai‘i); graduates of the Master of Arts in Teaching program, School of Education, which is celebrating 35 years; and more.

Save the date, spread the word, and get ready for an unforgettable weekend of reconnecting and celebrating. Questions? Go to pugetsound.edu/srw, email reunion@pugetsound.edu, or call 253.879.2877. And see you at Summer Reunion!