The curtain closes: WVU Associate Professor of Dance General Hambrick retires after 13 years

Fun-loving. Passionate. Adventurous.

Creative. Colorful. Generous.

Lighthearted. Funny. Caring.

Warm. Open. Generous.

These are the words colleagues and students used to describe Associate Professor of Dance General McArthur Hambrick as they celebrated his 13-year career with the WVU School of Theatre and Dance.

On May 3, fellow Dance faculty, alumni and current students gathered to celebrate Hambrick’s retirement and wish him well as the curtain falls on this act of his life.

“I really love working with General, and I feel very, very grateful to have had this time working with him. We're a pretty tight and small group, and the fact that we get along so well and talk openly and easily with each other—it's a lucky thing to have,” said Teaching Associate Professor Maureen Mansfield Kaddar.

Over his years at WVU, Hambrick taught myriad classes, coached numerous dancers and singers, assisted dozens of musical productions and choreographed countless dances. He helped build up the Dance and Musical Theatre programs and founded the New World Ensemble, an extracurricular musical theatre group. He brought to the classroom his decades of experience dancing and performing professionally, including the rigor and discipline he’d learned along the way.

“His dedication to pedagogy and student development is infectious and inspiring,” said Director of Dance Yoav Kaddar. “He really cares about students. He loves teaching and discovering raw talent, especially finding dancers who don’t know they’re dancers.”

Mansfield Kaddar said Hambrick has had an enormous impact on the Dance program. Each Dance faculty member brings unique knowledge, experiences and techniques, but Hambrick’s impact goes beyond just what he taught in the classroom.

“He's such a strong influence on people, and his lust for life is really powerful. We just had a little celebration for him, and people who graduated 12 years ago came to celebrate him,” she said.

When one door closes …

Kaddar met Hambrick 31 years ago in Laramie, Wyoming. Kaddar was there to teach a summer dance program, and Hambrick was a visiting artist and faculty member at the University of Wyoming. They saw each other every summer for several years before life took them in different directions, but they maintained a relationship.

Hambrick pursued a Master of Fine Arts in Dance at the University of Washington in Seattle—the same program from which Kaddar had graduated. After completing his degree, Hambrick applied to teach musical theatre at the University of Utah and reached out to Kaddar for a letter of recommendation.

“Yoav said, ‘Well, if you don't get that, you should apply here,’” said Hambrick.

At the time, the Dance program at WVU was still in its early stages, but Kaddar knew another full-time faculty position would be opening.

“I thought of General, because I knew he was graduating from the same program I had. I also knew that the School of Theater and Dance, then the Division of Theater and Dance, was thinking of starting a musical theater program, and I knew General's background. I thought, ‘Oh, I know just the person,’” Kaddar said.

Hambrick didn’t get the position at the University of Utah. But that opened the door for him to come to WVU as a member of the Dance faculty.

“I ended up teaching dance instead of musical theater, but that's the way it was supposed to be,” said Hambrick. “I love watching my students go from one place to another and see them change in their technique and in the way they approach dance.”

Hambrick is known for being a tough instructor with high expectations, but his warm nature and infectious smile make his students want to do their best for him.

When graduating senior Liana Brooks and rising senior Brogan Ward came in as freshmen, they’d heard from upperclassmen that Hambrick would be the instructor who whipped them into shape.

“Where I danced before college, both of my teachers were alumni from WVU, so they kind of instilled that, and the current students also made that very clear coming in,” said Ward.

“I had a friend who was a junior at WVU when I started, and she was like ‘General stands up to his name—he's like a general,’” said Brooks. “But I was used to that at my home studio, so I actually couldn’t wait to take his class.”

“He definitely pushes his students, but you can tell that there's a motive behind it. You can tell that it’s, in his words, ‘tough love.’ You can see that he really cares, and that's why he does it,” Ward added.

Brooks said she was warned he could be a little scary, but the moment she stepped into Hambrick’s modern dance class, his warm smile made her feel right at home.

“He was such a joy to be around, and his laugh lightens a room—it's beautiful and amazing,” Brooks said.

Ward still remembers his first rehearsal with Hambrick. He was a freshman and had been selected to perform in one of Hambrick’s choreographed dances.

“I was scared out of my mind, because I knew that he expects everyone to put in maximum effort when they're in the studio with him. I remember him showing probably 30 seconds of choreography once, and then expecting us to do it perfectly,” said Ward. “That was probably the biggest struggle in my life—freshman year, with people I still didn't know very well, and just waiting for anybody to call me out.”

But that didn’t stop Ward from coming back again and again. In fact, Ward never formally took one of Hambrick’s classes, but he’s lost count of how many he dropped into just to learn.

“He just has a teaching style that makes every student want to do good for him. He expects a lot, and the second you get a compliment from him it changes your day,” he said.

Many students who have worked with Hambrick have said the same, including Brooks.

“The way he teaches is so, so special,” she said. “He has this ability to get things out of you that you didn’t even know existed.”

Memories

A lot of memories are made in 13 years, and Hambrick has so many good ones from his time at WVU.

Of course, there are special experiences he shared with his students, particularly when he’s choreographing for them.

“I guess it was two years ago, I choreographed this piece that had these crazy panels on stage. The connection the students had with each other in that piece was very memorable, because it was about relationships—losing and gaining and that kind of thing,” said Hambrick.

For the 2026 “Dance Now!” show, Hambrick restaged a piece he’d originally choreographed in 2021.

“Being able to set it on this group of mostly seniors was very special,” he said.

Another of his favorite moments came from early in his WVU career. Not long after joining the faculty, he applied for a grant to fund a short film project he wanted to do about alternate side parking in New York City.

“When I lived in New York and did Broadway, I would have to go out twice a week, move my car, and sit on one side of the street until the street cleaner came down.Then everybody would move back over,” Hambrick said. “I always looked at it as a dance: how the cars had to move all at the same time in this crazy morning thing that we did twice a week. So, I got some of the people from here to go to New York with me and we did this film called New York Tango.”

Perhaps one of his favorite memories is one shared by Kaddar and Mansfield Kaddar as well.

“When I was just learning to dance, I saw Paul Taylor in New York and I said, ‘I want to do that Esplanade song.’ And I almost had a chance to do it,” said Hambrick.

That “almost” haunted him for years, until Mansfield Kaddar, a former member of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, decided to stage “Esplanade” at WVU. It was a bucket-list moment for Hambrick and an experience he still cherishes.

It’s an experience Mansfield Kaddar and Kaddar also cherish.

“General and Yoav were in the cast, and I knew how much he always wanted to do that dance, and that was really meaningful for me to be able to share that with him,” said Mansfield Kaddar.

While the Dance faculty as a whole are a tight-knit group, Hambrick, Kaddar and Mansfield Kaddar are especially close.

“General was just another member of our family,” said Kaddar. “Having him as part of my life, not the work part, was special. The relationship is so strong that we can disagree, but we have a lot of respect for one another—personally, artistically and as colleagues in this program.”

“We have this habit of talking at, like, 1 o'clock in the morning,” Mansfield Kaddar said. “We'll text and say, ‘Are you still up?’ Because we'll have to run something by each other. We may still do that, but it might not be about the same subjects, so I'm going to miss that a lot.”

General’s legacy

If you ask Hambrick what his legacy will be, he hopes the musical theatre group he started, the New World Ensemble, will continue to thrive long after he is gone. He hopes he’s remembered as someone who worked hard and had high standards, but who always made time for play and fun.

If you ask his colleagues, Hambrick’s legacy is his influence on everyone he meets and the metaphorical fingerprints he’s left all over the Dance program. It lives on in every dancer who has passed through WVU in the last 13 years, including Brooks and Ward.

Brooks said that in her final meeting with Dance faculty, Hambrick pointed out the way her shoulders have lowered over the years. When she came in as a freshman, she would sit with her shoulders hunched up around her ears. Now, she sits straight and tall.

“He got me out of my shell and helped me loosen up,” Brooks said. “He gave me that sense of ‘You can relax here. You belong here.’ He has meant the world to this program. And it's not going to be the same without him.”

“Compared to freshman year, I’m a lot stronger as a dancer, physically and mentally, and better at expressing myself as a dancer,” said Ward. “General made it a point for me to come to Saturday ballet classes when I didn't want to because he saw potential in me, and that is something that I'll probably take into the rest of my life, whether I do dance or another profession. The way he pushed me, because he saw potential in me, is one of the most inspiring things that has happened to me, especially here at WVU.”

The final bows

Although Hambrick is retiring from his full-time teaching position at WVU, he plans to continue teaching and choregraphing dance. He already has teaching commitments over the summer in Memphis and New Hampshire and plans to get back into writing and hire an agent for a return to musical theatre. Also on his retirement docket: flight attendant.

“I know it's crazy, but I love to travel,” said Hambrick. “So I told my friends and my students that I'm going to apply for Delta Airlines because I want to be a flight attendant.”

His students think he would be great at it.

“He would make friends with everyone on that plane. Even if they want to be quiet and sit there in silence. He's going to be like, ‘No, I'm going to go talk to you,’ and just be as friendly as he always is,” said Brooks.

Everyone knows this is not the last WVU will see of him either He has made a multitude of friends across the University’s various colleges and schools, and he’s likely to come back as a student (officially or not) in his former colleagues’ classes.

While this might not be goodbye forever, Hambrick and those in the University community who care for him know that this is an end of an era. Such occasions deserve some parting words.

Hambrick’s message was one of gratitude.

I just want to say thank you. I had wonderful students to work with. I'm glad that people like Paul Kreider let me start the New World Ensemble and Dean Keith Jackson helped me keep it going. And for Yoav and Maureen kind of being my family away from home. And thank you to all of my colleagues. General Hambrick

And, his last message to his students: “I know this sounds corny, but I just say ‘Keep dance alive.’”

Several of Hambrick’s colleagues and students had farewell messages for the longtime instructor and mentor.

“I know there's no such thing as retirement for General. Whatever his new adventures are, wherever it will take him, I just hope he has a wonderful time. He knows people all over the country, all over the world, and he has so many talents. It's kind of exciting to think that he can spread that talent a little further,” said Mansfield Kaddar.

“Thank you, General, for everything that you’ve done, not just for me, but for all of the students here in the Dance program,” Ward said. “Majors, minors, Student Dance Association members even, were all inspired by you. I know that your next journey outside of WVU is going to be nothing short of what you've done here.”

“General doesn't need any luck. He's just going to go and do whatever he wants, and he's going to be great at it. Because that's just who he is. He's going to be that flight attendant. He's going to fly,” said Brooks. “He's going to soar in whatever he does.”

Kaddar’s farewell to his friend and fellow teacher was succinct: “Keep on dancing. And I know he will.”