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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Dance Spotlight: Fall Dance Concert

The 2014 Fall Dance Concert on Friday, Nov. 21 in the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts Dance Theatre was well worth an hour of my Friday night. Featuring works by senior dance majors Doug LeCours ’15, Afi Yellow-Duke ’15, Stevie Durocher ’15.5, Sarae Snyder ’15 and Artist-in-Residence Scotty Hardwig, it questioned my previously held notions of what dance is or isn’t. In addition, the show opened up possible new relationships between dance and other types of media.

LeCours’s piece, “Torch Song for  a Resurrection,” opened the night with an eerie yet oddly comforting note. I was immediately reminded of the 1999 film The Virgin Suicides. The dancers, Sarah Briggs ’14.5, Emily Luan ’15, Annie Powers ’15, Snyder and Meredith White ’15, were dressed in mostly white, flowy attire and moved with a possessed quality. They seemed to have a single-minded goal that they would pursue at any means, but were also at peace with the work that lay ahead. I saw this embodied most in White’s solo as she repeated a phrase and fell to the ground over and over. She dedicated each repetition to someone or something, literally sacrificing her own energy, and metaphorical body, to another. The beauty in the piece lay in LeCours’ choice to give his dancers an overarching structure to work with but let them interpret it as they may. His piece ended with the five dancers lying in a pile on the floor, limbs tangled and giggling, reminding me of sleepovers spent whispering secrets until dawn.

Yellow-Duke’s piece, “An Exercise In…,” was the most direct of the night. It addressed us, the audience, head-on and questioned our comfort in keeping up the status quo. The dancers, Naomi Eisenberg ’18, Mandy Kimm ’17, Deborah Leedy ’18 and Andrew Pester ’17, would run forward in turn, try to make their voices heard, and be violently silenced by another. There were some beautiful unison phrases as the silenced and the silencer transitioned into movement and folded back into the group. The most powerful moments were hearing the dancers’ voices as they fought against their silencers. The musical score was the constant guiding force of the work. Had it not been there, I would have missed the sense of urgency and irregularity that it created.

Durocher’s work, “The Lies They Tell Our Daughters,” spoke to our (mis)conceptions of female role models. I loved how she used the scrim, an ivory colored backdrop, as a metaphor for icons that we hold to be larger than life. The piece opened with Madeline Logue ’17 dancing behind the scrim so that we were watching her shadow. At times, her shadow became distorted as she moved away from the light, but she remained grand, anonymous and untouchable. When she stepped onto the stage, it was if we were finally allowed to see the real person behind the mask. She and Najwa Stanford ’16 joined Brigette Dale ’18 in dancing together. Unlike some other dance pieces, the development of the dancers was clear. All three benefitted from revealing their true selves, instead of hiding behind distorted shadows. The positive influence that Stanford and Logue had on Dale was unmistakable. Different yet complementary viewpoints were represented by their distinct dance styles. Logue, in pointe shoes and a leotard, represented a classical ballet presence. In contrast, Stanford brought the groundedness of modern dance.

The Newcomers Piece, choreographed by Hardwig and titled “blood pumps heart,” was visually stunning. The choreography was impressively athletic, and it was the unexpected moments of stillness that made it memorable. The partnering was woven in very smoothly; every pair had a genuine connection. I particularly liked the juxtaposition of unison phrases with the breaking out of unison movement. One of my favorite moments occurred when the women partnered each other while the men partnered each other and all four danced on stage. The other was when Krystal Egbuchulam ’18 began a phrase and repeated it four more times, the others, Miguel Castillo ’17.5, Vanessa Dikuyama ’18 and Connor Pisano ’18, joining her with each repetition. Finally, I appreciated Hardwig’s use of lighting as an active element of the piece. Footlights at the front of the stage projected multiple shadows of each dancer onto the scrim, making it feel like the stage had three or four times more movement and energy. On top of that, there was a lighting effect that created a middle panel of the scrim, and this panel seemed to defy the lighting. Only the shadows from certain lights showed. The overall effect was like looking into a giant mirror, and not being sure of whether what you were seeing was a projection or reality.

Sarae Snyder’s work, “Trace,” closed the night. She also utilized the scrim in an unusual way by projecting a film of herself dancing outside. The film, edited by Vladimir Kremenovic ’17, depicted her dancing with a stool in a field. He had manipulated the footage with layered multiple takes, so it looked like there were several realities occurring at once. There were conversations between the live Snyder and film Snyder, as well as between the multiple versions of Snyder within the film. Similar to when she danced in LeCours’s piece, she had a possessed air about her. This was most clear in the moments when she was thrashing, hair flying everywhere. At the very end, she laid face down on the ground. As she slowly turned her face towards the audience, even though her hair was covering her face, I knew she probably had an empty look on her face, daring us to challenge her.


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