Innovative senior projects immerse audience in movement

Author: Beth Connolly

More than just dance, "Distance Between" was a full sensory experience combining music, video, found sound and colorful costumes with compositions in varied styles. "Distance Between," Louisa Irving's '07 senior project, drew an enthusiastic audience last Friday and Saturday nights to the Center for the Arts Dance Studio. The show featured five pieces, including the final solos of Irving and Tatiana Virviescas Mendoza '07, as well as performances by the Dance Department's artist-in-residence Tiffany Rhynard and Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Lei Liang.

Irving opened the night with her self-choreographed solo, "Ping-pong," a representation of growth and cyclical change. Her dance bore frequent allusions to the animal kingdom, as she often seemed to possess the body of a slithering snake, hopping rabbit or trotting four-legged creature. Gradually this persona transformed into the grace of the human shape, with motions of height and flight. The transformation was marked by a tranquil moment that conveyed an awakening of self-awareness, as Irving walked her fingers up her neck and turned her face toward the light. Images of flowers, castles, butterflies and fireworks streamed constantly across the massive screen behind her, accompanied first by oriental chimes from the Temple of Heaven in Beijing and later by Velvet Underground's "I'll be your mirror." As the piece closed, Irving arranged mirrors on the stage floor, gazing into them, revealing a sense of developing self-consciousness that defined humanness.

Mendoza also explored the transformation from innocence to experience in her solo, "Translation: Restricted Flavors," though in a more light-hearted vehicle: the forbidden apple. In an inspired, witty and sensual performance, Virviescas Mendoza personified the Garden of Eden with a Latin flair. Accompanied by her own voice as well as music from the soundtrack of Frida, Virviescas Mendoza, in a red dress, imbued the red apples with the spirit of forbidden passion. She cradled the apples, she balanced one on her head, a mobile of dangling apples descended from above, a torrent of apples rolled across the stage toward her and, in a triumphant climax, the lights dimmed as she took her first satisfying bite.

Nothing was as tangible as the glorious, youthful innocence in the ensemble piece, "Five in the backseat." The five dancers (Phillipe Bronchtein '10, Rebecca Marcus '07.5, Adriane Medina '08, Yina Ng '09 and Claire Ojima '07), all smiling, were united in their single-minded pursuit of childlike frolic and physical expressions of wonder. Yet they cavorted about the stage in costumes of green, orange and brown, which were reminiscent of the transition from spring to autumn. The piece was bounded at its beginning and end by a beeping, which gave it the quality of a dream, only a temporary escape from adult responsibilities.

The return to adulthood was also evident in the next dance, "Green Piece," which was filled with the imagery of war, violence and blame. Rhynard's motions were stunningly accompanied by Liang's performance of an original composition on piano. The slow, lilting notes of Liang's "Garden Pieces" often dictated Rhynard's movement, changing her from one frozen pose to the next. As she danced, the images of rolling waves were projected onto the screen behind her, first in a sliver and then gradually creeping until waves filled the entire background. The projection was incorporated into the piece at its conclusion, when the noise of rushing water gave the impression of drowning in an endless sea. Alternately inhabiting the persona of warrior, soldier, peace activist, earth lover and yogi, Rhynard's gestures persuasively evoked the problematic nature of war in our time.

The night concluded with an improvisational number performed by The Middlebury Improvisation Ensemble dancers and musicians (Music Director for Dance Michael Chorney on guitar, Jeremy Harlos on bass and Arthur Brooks on trumpet).

Of her project, Irving said, "I wanted to make a piece that referenced my time spent abroad in China, not only on a visual and kinesthetic level, but an emotional one too. I think it is a difficult piece for audiences to digest because they are presented with vulnerable moments of silence and stillness, juxtaposed with high energy and intensity." As a joint Dance and International Studies major, Irving spent part of her junior year in China. Post-graduation, she plans to unite her two passions by teaching dance in China, collaborating with Chinese dancers.

"I am drawn to dance because to me it is the most honest form of communication and expression," said Irving. "Through dance I feel like I am able to be my most multi-faceted, complicated, joyful, ranting self."

Mendoza's piece was intimately connected with her senior thesis, "The Colombian Diaspora in Paris," which she researched during her junior year abroad in Paris. An Independent Scholar studying Dance, Anthropology and International Studies, she left her native Colombia to finish high school in Hong Kong before coming to Middlebury. She brings an eclectic mix of influences to her dancing, which, she says, gives her "liberation, pleasure, a way of expressing, of communicating, of reading people." What was behind the use of the apples? Mendoza was inspired by the difference between the taste of a Chinese apple and a Colombian apple; influencing the dance that changed a familiar object into a series of surprises.

Simultaneously speaking to the distance between nations, between childhood and adulthood and between innocence and experience, Irving's senior project made for a thought-provoking night of movement.