Beth Mehocic

Dr. Beth Mehocic was the Composer-in-Residence, Music Director, and Full-Professor for the Dance Department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and wrote over 100 works for orchestra, concert band, chamber music, dance ensembles, theater, and film. Her works have been performed throughout the United States, Japan, China, Korea, and Europe, and she had works performed in several Las Vegas Hotels including The Mirage, Caesar’s Palace, and the Las Vegas Hilton. Several of her works have been recorded for PARMA Recordings.

From 2000-2018, several of Mehocic’s music compositions written for choreography were performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, the Adelaide Fringe Festival in Adelaide, Australia, and for joint concerts between UNLV and the Korea National Sport University in Seoul, Korea. Her video dance poem Perpetual Motion with original music for vibraphone quartet was also performed in Seoul, Korea and the video is in the Jerome Robbins Dance Library of the NYC Library at Lincoln Center. Shadows, a dance poem with her original music, and her video dance poem, Hands, were presented at the 2005 International Taishan Congress of Cultures and the 19th World Congress of Poets in Tai’an City, Shandong Province, China, for which she was awarded a “Gold Medal in Innovation” for digital poetry, dance, and music by the People’s Republic of China.

As a multimedia performing artist, Mehocic’s music, poetry, visual art, and dance were presented in her one-woman exhibit entitled Poetic Visions, which was on tour in the Clark County Library Galleries in Las Vegas. She received several grants from The Nevada State Council on the Arts as well as a grant for her participation in the China Conference. Her other grants included awards from New Music Across America, the Southwest Gas Corp., The Western States Arts Foundation, and Meet-the-Composer as well as awards in music composition from ASCAP. Her article “Learning to Dance with Live Music” was published by Dance Teacher Now and her article “Chamber Music in Las Vegas” was featured in the directory edition of Chamber Music America. She was proclaimed “Distinguished Composer” of the City of Las Vegas by Former Mayor Jan Laverty Jones and received commissions from New Music Across America, the Sierra Woodwind Quintet, and the University of Utah for the score to a documentary film that commemorated 50 years of dance history at the university. She  also received commissions from Artists Embassy International and the Natica Angilly Poetic Dance Theater. She was awarded the First Performing Artist’s Fellowship in Music Composition from the State of Nevada and became a founding member for the International Guild of Musicians in Dance, the first guild in western history devoted to the advancement of concert dance music and musical education of dancers. She was also the founding editor for the Guild’s journal for three years.