Loabelle Black Mangelson-Clawson Endowed Scholarship Fund
Created through a generous contribution by late Professor Emeritus Loabelle Mangelson-Clawson, the recently established LOABELLE BLACK CLAWSON ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIP FUND will provide vital scholarship support to Modern Dance BFA majors interested in the field of Choreography in the University of Utah School of Dance.
We hope you will consider a gift honoring Loabelle’s legacy at the University of Utah as a dancer, student, teacher, mentor, choreographer, writer, actor, and friend. Along with Loabelle, you can make a donation to support Modern Dance BFA majors.
Loabelle Black Mangelson-Clawson
University of Utah School of Dance
Professor Emeritus
Years of Service: 1971 - 1998
Loabelle Black Mangelson-Clawson was a pioneer in the evolution of dance in Utah. Her instruction and choreography laid the foundation for the Utah dance community we know today.
Born in the rural Millard County, Utah, Clawson’s first dance lessons came from a Japanese woman interned at the Topaz War Relocation Center in the early 1940s. This experience had a lasting influence on her life, leading her to continue her pursuit of dance and choreography for the remainder of her life.
As a teenager, Clawson taught dance to younger children, earning money to travel by bus to Salt Lake City every Saturday to study with Willam Christensen, founder of Ballet West. She eventually received her bachelor’s degree in dance and education from the University of Utah in 1959, and then returned to the U a few years later to receive her Master of Fine Arts in Modern Dance degree and join the U’s Dance faculty.
Clawson was a founding member of the Repertory Dance Theater, and also founded the student-comprised Performing Dance Company at the U, serving as its artistic director until 1989. She received many grants, including from the National Endowment for the Arts, for which she was selected as a Movement Specialist. During her esteemed career, Clawson was a prolific choreographer, and her work has been performed across the United States as well as in Europe, Africa, Australia, China, Taiwan, and the Middle East.
In 1990, Clawson received a Dee Fellowship for “Ladies of the Dance,” a performance and film in which she reflected on the history and living legends of modern dance at the University of Utah. Her creative project honored individual contributions to the department by Elizabeth R. Hayes, Joan Woodbury, Shirley Ririe, and Anne Riordan, as well as Loabelle herself. It also recognized the “third generation” of major dance educators Phyllis Haskell, Abby Fiat, Susan McLain-Smith, and Donna White.
The Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce celebrated Clawson in 1991 during its ninth annual Honors in the Arts dinner for her outstanding contributions to Utah’s rich cultural arts heritage. Her photo and biography hang in Salt Lake City’s Abravanel Hall.
After her retirement from the University of Utah in 1997, Loabelle continued to pursue her creative passion for dance by writing, choreographing, and acting in a one-woman theater performance. A tribute to one of the mothers of modern dance, Isadora Duncan, “Done into Dance” was later produced by KUED as a video special for the University Utah.
In 2012, Clawson received the prestigious Merit of Honor Award from the University of Utah Emeritus Alumni board. Her final creative work was a romance novel published in 2016— Internment and Survival in the Great Basin Desert— inspired by her experiences studying dance at the Topaz internment camp as a child.
“Loa Mangelson-Clawson was a truly remarkable woman! I cherish the memories of our time together; she was my teacher, mentor, faculty colleague, and friend for well over a decade. I first met Loa when I started graduate school in the modern dance department. She was a force to be reckoned with. Her creativity and mentorship were legendary – not an exaggeration – and her choreographic prowess was a joy to watch and be involved in. My first performance in Performing Dance Company (PDC), which she founded in 1978 to create student performance opportunities, was in one of Loa’s works. She had an image in mind of a harlequin figure seemingly suspended in mid-air, an illusion she created by using a large piece of Velcro on the costume that ‘stuck’ me to a door frame on wheels. She taught me that to realize any idea simply required dedication and not being afraid to take chances. She later took PDC to Las Vegas to perform at the annual conference of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD). After performing and attending conference sessions, Loa made sure that the company made it back to the airport, where she gleefully announced that she would not be returning to Salt Lake City with us because she was eloping with Jack to get married in Sedona. This epitomizes her approach to life, which she shared through her writing, performing, teaching, mentorship and choreography: playful, imaginative, extraordinary, surprising, and always full of heart!”
Brent Schneider, Professor Emeritus
Years of Service: 1996 - 2023
