Dancers Draw Ideas from Different Facets

Tomorrow evening, Davis Anderson ’13, Jessica Lee ’13 and Hannah Pierce ’13 will present their senior work in the Senior Thesis Dance Concert. Each artist’s work has a distinct approach and subject matter, all exploring personal connections to various dimensions of the contemporary human.

Pierce will perform two solo pieces in the concert. Visiting Assistant Professor Catherine Cabeen choreographed “I Want …” in collaboration with composer Kane Mathis. Pierce created the second piece, Concerning Automatic Sprouts, in collaboration with Ricky Chen ’13, who created an original musical score. Collaboration with other artists is central to Pierce’s thesis as she explores this communication gap as a tool to push the boundaries of anatomical investigation and artistic possibility.

“As an artist, I’m really interested in these gaps in communication – between me and Catherine, me and the audience, or me and Ricky,” Pierce said. “When you both think you know what’s going on but there is some ambiguous space between those thoughts. Working with Catherine, finding things in her body and seeing how they change or don’t change when they get transferred onto my body is a treat. It’s a gift, in a way, to see her make this dance. It’s very rooted in a physical experience, but it’s also about a socially and politically constructed understanding of the body.”

While resisting those constraints to a certain extent, “I think the really nice thing about the piece is it looks for peace within that resistance,” she continued. “Both pieces are about figuring out your body and where it is in the world. They’re both very personal, but they’re both very different sides of myself. I feel like everyone makes their own life when they make art. It’s about you, cause that’s what you know.”

Pierce also researched Denise Oppenheim, an artist whose large-scale architectural sculptures transform the essence of recognizable forms by manipulating certain structural components of their overall composition (Think of a church structure standing on its steeple).

As a joint major in dance and environmental studies, Lee’s work, Remembered Paths and Fresh Imprints, contemplates the myriad of ways humans relate and interact with their surroundings.

“I want to raise awareness of the multiple stories embedded in space, to help people become aware of the multiple layers embedded in space,” Lee said. “A certain place has a historical layer, a biological layer, a geological layer, a social layer. I hope that uncovering these stories helps us find personal connections to our physical environments – both those that we consider ‘natural’ and those that we, as humans, shape – and increases our appreciation for the world at large.”

Lee’s conceptualization of space and place is informed by deep, personal connections to specific places on and around campus. She used a variety of creative tools through her process, drawing on recent experience with site-specific work and improvisation while exploring each site with her company of four dancers.

“We did 20 minutes of pure dancing, doing whatever you feel is right, going with your impulse,” said Lee, explaining how one site investigation worked.

“I strongly believe that our movement in these spaces reveals something about the place itself, as well as something about ourselves.”

Lee also worked with natural or environmental symbolism through her process.

As an example, “Paths delineate where we’re supposed to go and how we’re supposed to get there,” said Lee, elaborating that paths also represent the possibility of choice, of reaching a juncture, and perhaps looking back on the paths and choices we encounter and follow in life.

Anderson’s work is divided into three sections entitled The Art of “Too Much,” An Invitation to Curiosity and But I’m Here. Each piece is stylistically unique, employing various performance tools to question how much each of us performs off stage in our daily lives.

“Each piece is a seemingly different way of addressing the same subject,” said Anderson.

With a joint major in dance and political science, and a minor in women and gender studies, Anderson critically explores numerous concepts that seemingly compose one’s indentity.

“We’re investigating the identity politics of drag to empower marginalized minorities,” Anderson explained, “unpacking identity politics through drag, contextualizing yourself within identity politics to help empower you, to help you realize that you’re a person. You don’t need to apologize for your being and your presence, and by doing so you’re adding another vital, important voice to the larger context that is the United States, through self-actualization and strengthening the democracy. RuPaul Charles, a famous, lucrative drag queen and source of inspiration said ‘we’re all born naked, and the rest is drag,’ and I firmly believe that.”

“‘You’re not your religions, you’re not your politics,’ and I like to say I’m not not my skin color, I’m not my penis, I’m not where I grew up, I’m not my family. I’m not any of those things, they just happen and meaning gets projected onto them or infused into them. I feel that drag is looking at that and taking it apart, and realizing that I can be whatever I want to be.”

While creating these works, Anderson additionally asked each of his dancers a set of questions geared towards individual perception of identity. “Who are you?” “What parts of you are fixed?” “Which parts of you are mutable?”
The concert runs Friday and Saturday evening, beginning at 8 p.m. both nights in the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts Dance Theatre.