Dance-making has deep roots, in the experiences of choreographer and dancer alike. For the four senior dance majors whose choreographic work composed “Threshold” this past weekend, their research in various fields deeply informed their pieces. For all of the works, the choreographers engaged in dance as a mode of research – Stevie Durocher ’15.5 in connection with English literature, Doug LeCours ’15 with creative writing, Afi Yellow-Duke ’15 with sociology and Sarae Snyder ’15 with physicality and anatomical study.
Pervasive through the evening was a constant questioning of what it means to be a body, a person, in relation to societal expectations. Perhaps the most narrative work of the evening was Stevie Durocher’s “Reasons,” performed by Krystal Egbuchalam ’18, Olivia Raggio ’15.5, Julia Rossen ’16, Esme Valette ’16 and Durocher herself. Durocher’s solo and duet work with Egbuchalam followed the opening of the piece, in which the audience saw only shadows of dancers on the illuminated surface of the white scrim at the back of the dance theater – effectively creating images of smooth, ballet-esque movement like shadows on the stage of Durocher’s memory as she performed an intensely reflective and inwardly-focused solo. She hesitantly put on a pair of pointe shoes and moved between uninhibited leaps and stillness on pointe, embodying the intersection between a classical ballet background and modern dance forms.
LeCours’ work, “MY SAD GIRL DEAD BOY PROM NIGHT PITY PARTY,” shed light on the American narratives of sad girls and mourning rituals alongside the dialogue of LeCours’ queer male body. The piece invited a space of “radical mourning” that challenged audience members to laugh, to cry and to grieve the traumas, large or small, that we have all experienced. His five dancers, Juliette Gobin ’16, Emily Luan ’15, Annie Powers ’15, Sarae Snyder ’15 and Meredith White ’15, formed a group of wraith-like women clad in white nightgowns. Their distant, sorrowful gazes lent their movement an almost involuntary or sleepwalk-like feel, interrupted only by moments in which Gobin, and later White, broke apart from the other women for solo moments, collapsing out of the automatic motion into a more pained expressiveness. White’s tangible agony accompanied the sound of her whimpers and sobs as she struggled between the distant, reflex motion and her emotional collapse, and heel-toed offstage.
Sarae Snyder’s duet work, “Vowels,” was brought to life by Miguel Castillo ’17.5 and Meredith White ’15, in an exploration of how physicality and interaction develop meaning throughout the creation and performance process.
“I am interested in how content emerges from otherwise ‘meaningless’ physicality,” Snyder wrote in the Program Notes.
While watching dance, it is often tempting to try to uncover a narrative behind the piece, but Snyder’s work defies this attempt by presenting varied and innovative movement forms that make the viewer’s experience very much their own. What we take with us after witnessing such a performance are glimpses of what the dance has provoked in us. This narrative was enhanced by portions of the audio: Compiled by Snyder, recordings of Castillo and White’s voices speaking words and non-words created sounds that defied meaning in the same way as their movements.
The ending phrase of “Vowels” invited this interpretation: For a moment, the pair held hands and leaned their upper bodies away from each other whilst placing their feet close together, united in gaze and breath. Before long, they gradually twisted and fell away to run to separate spotlights on either side of the stage, hands on their chests. This moment read as an expression of both a mutual need for connection and an acknowledgement of our need to stand on our own – simultaneously together and alone.
Choreographed by Afi Yellow-Duke ’15, “Post American Mess” engaged in a deep questioning of fear, the unknown and our confrontation of it – or rather, our lack thereof. The piece flickered into view with a stark light on dancers Rachel Getz ’15.5, Andrew Pester ’17 and Julia Rossen ’16 as they paced onstage, periodically raising their trembling hands beside their heads. Audio from various public safety announcement-like texts contributed to an atmosphere of worry and impending danger, amplified by evocations of run-duck-and-cover movements of bomb drills and jarringly contrasted by mocking, circus-like and patriotic music. Perhaps the piece’s most evocative movement was the morphing of an anxious hand twitch into a saluting hand – addressing the notion of how America, as a concept, a place and a society, can stand at the root of our anxieties.
The evening’s last work was a second duet, created and performed by Sarae Snyder and Maggie Ammons, a student of dance and neurobiology at Bennington College. The work’s title “(Co)incidents” is layered in its significance, as it reflects the collaborative process of creation, whilst also sounding very much like ‘coincidence’ – a possible reference to the manner in which meaning and content emerged.
Snyder and Ammons exemplified a level of synchronicity in their unison phrases that deeply satisfied the aesthetic instinct – a particularly impressive feat in moments of silent movement. A note of humor arose as deep, club-like rhythms accompanied Ammons’ and Snyder’s empty-gazed, slack-limbed movement. At one point, they disregard each other to the point of bumping into and dancing over each other’s bodies – an allusion to practices of embodiment within dark, loud and bass-pumping music environments. But this physicality is dance as well. Within this piece, as in the works of the other senior choreographers, artists engaged in an exploration of the threshold of physicality and human experience in relation to culture, art and meaning.
Dance Finds Interdisciplinary Expression
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