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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

"Synergy" - Senior Dance Show

I go to a show to be convinced. It doesn’t have anything to do with good faith, or believing that something has meaning because I paid six bucks to watch it. It’s the respect for a performer’s ability to do their job: to make me think, not tell me what to think. In return, I don’t pretend it’s my job to tell them what they’re saying. My job is to respond.

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The choreography of Synergy didn’t bother stopping to invite response — instead, response was demanded, over and over. In a year, if the audience doesn’t remember individual moments of movement, what will remain impossible to forget was the laughter. Of course the humor of “A Generation Gap” — referred to affectionately by the dancers as “The Bad Dance” — was obvious: Alena Giesche ’11, Cat Miller ’11, Christian Morel ’11 and Heather Pynne ’11 dedicated their considerable talents to ecstatic hip thrusts, classic Madonna voguing, the Macarena and other laughably mainstream caricatures, set appropriately to Akon’s “Sexy B*tch” and under the cover of black pleather and more glitter than any self-respecting drag queen could hide in his bottom drawer. But more than a successful act of performative comedy, this dance betrayed an awareness of the act of dance: the audience was allowed to see that dance is and should be hard work, but it can also be fun. Well-executed does not necessarily mean sober-as-Swan-Lake, and funny doesn’t necessitate making passion a joke.

This mindset of uninhibited self-awareness was among the strongest ever-present themes of Synergy. For this, an impressive amount of credit is due to Heather Pynne, whose lighting design proved innovative in the most transformative sense of the word: I had not realized how embarrassingly little attention I had paid to lighting until I realized how much Pynne’s work deserved. It is difficult to do justice to how thoroughly her design betrayed a deep understanding of both the choreography and how to highlight it. Most pointedly, for Miller’s heartwrenching solo “Breaking,” Pynne chose to suspend two ceramic lamps; which, in harmony with the sound of rainfall and strings, recalled industrial alleys after midnight. The restriction implied by their halos underscored Miller’s intuitive embodiment of torturous self-containment. Pynne taught the audience that the best lighting makes the dancer’s message clearer — with that support, Miller’s fluid articulation had me feeling the question, “What’s wrong with me?” instead of asking it.

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If Miller left me suspended in the poignancy of emotion, Morel’s piece shook down all existential perches and left me in a very corporeal nest of sensation. Morel’s choreography opens in the body of Alexandra Vasquez ’12: her tank-top and petal-skirted costuming allowed for the clear articulation of each muscle, showcasing Morel’s remarkable intuition in the beauty of opposites. Constantly, we are made to reconcile the seamless with the serrated, maddening tik-tok precision with organic evolution of motion. Morel took full advantage of dancer Julianna Mauriello’s ’13 faultless articulation and softened James Moore’s ’12 angular fluidity to create a quartet that could at times be both chilling and romantic, and left the viewer feeling like they went out for a night in the red light district and ended up falling in love. Morel understands how the body was made to move.

In terms of surprise, Giesche’s work takes the cake — both “and in the end we laugh” and “I view you” showed huge change when considered in the context of her past work. What remained was her trademark sensibility of how one body relates to another, highlighted in her duets co-choreographed with Jeremy Cline ’11.5; in her choreography, his body finds a way to effortlessly tread the line between strength and grace that leaves you breathless after lifts. Her own dancing has the quality of a catalyst: her motion seems to be always in transition, even in pause, that allows a piece to move forward — and facilitates its audience’s release into that motion. Part of that seamlessness is what makes “I view you” stunning. Focusing on self-image as defined and constricted by social fear, Giesche used voice-over of interviews with her dancers and lighting projected onto her dancers’ bodies to create a decidedly audience-involving piece. As the dancers enter in nude-colored leotards, their skin seems to take on the lighting of the projections. Later, as they dress in outfits brought onto stage, it feels almost as if the audience is dressing them. We are left to wonder how arbitrary those dressings are. Here again we find humor and revelation in what’s not expected–something Giesche should be commended for.

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In addition to her paired solos, “Breaking” and “Restoration,” Cat Miller choreographed a third piece, “Cluttered Ships.” Dancers Davis Anderson ’13, Alex Siega ’12, Moore and Alicia Evancho ’12 showcased one of Miller’s choreographic strengths, which integrates practices of dance movement therapy: the way an individual body expresses an emotion. What was perfectly communicated was the poignant and often painful consequence of human interaction; Siega’s dynamic execution played well with Evancho’s gymnastic elegance. Moore and Anderson’s duet, wracked with the tenderness of intimacy and fear thereof, proved unforgettable.

The greatest of dance performances leave you wanting to dance. The Middlebury seniors have done this with Synergy, bypassing convincing and becoming a dialogue that both enriches and astounds.


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