UNC Modernextension Dance Company was founded in 1988 as a performing outlet for students interested in dance at UNC-Chapel Hill. The company performs several times throughout the year in concerts, which present both faculty and student choreography, as well as works created for the Company by guest choreographers. In previous summers, thirteen company members have had the opportunity to study and perform at the American Dance Festival. Modernextension has won recognition at the American College Dance Festival and its members have won scholarships to the American Dance Festival, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, the Julliard School of Dance, the Martha Graham School of Dance, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio.

UNC Modernextension Dance Company has won fine recognition performing the works of Marian Hopkins at the 1991 Mid-Atlantic American College Dance Festival Gala Concert, the Julia Wray Memorial Concert for Selected NC Choreographers and the NC Dance Showcase. Since 1995, the Company has hosted a Fall Dance Celebration, a special day of dance classes open to the community and closing with an invitational concert of both student and faculty choreography performed by students from several universities. Since its beginning, the spirit of the Company has reflected a great love of dance, and its members have given an enormous amount of time and energy despite their diverse academic areas of interest.

Marian Turner Hopkins, Faculty Advisor and Program Coordinator has been a dancer, choreographer and teacher in the Triangle area since 1975. Since receiving her MA degree from Ohio State University, she has performed as a solo artist and with the Frank Holder Dance Company, Carolina Dancers, No Forwarding Address, as a founding member and former Artistic Director for the New Performing Dance Company, and most recently with Clay Taliaferro, Duke University Artist-in-Residence, in his Ten Year Retrospective Concert and with Jack Arnold and Dancers for the UNC Bicentennial Dance Concert. As a choreographer she has created over forty works, including works in collaboration with musician-writer Rich Robeson, choreography for Playmakers Theatre and recently commissioned works for Elon College, Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, UNC-Charlotte and Towson State University in Baltimore, Maryland. Mrs. Hopkins also received a grant from the American Dance Festival for NC Choreographers and has performed her own solo work in Honolulu, Hawaii as part of an invitational choreographers' concert.

In 1988, she founded the UNC Modernextension Dance Company which has won fine recognition and performed her work at the Mid-Atlantic American College Dance Festival's Gala Concert, the Julia Wray Memorial Concert presenting the works of selected North Carolina professional choreographers and the North Carolina Showcase. She has taught extensively throughout the area and since 1979 has been a full-time faculty member teaching dance at UNC-Chapel Hill. She served on the Board of the NC Dance Alliance, 1992-1994 and has served as a guest panelist on the Board of the NC State Arts Council, 1994-1996. She lives with her husband, Jonathan, and two year old son, Ian.