The annual Spring Senior Thesis Dance Concert, “Almost There,” portrayed an extraordinary variety of dance pieces, each captivating the audience in its own unique way. Performed last weekend at the ’92 Theatre, all the dance pieces showcased the fascinating research each senior compiled, leading to this culminating dance experience.
In the first piece, “amyloplastic: a postmodern romantic ballet,” Grace Nowakoski ’07 interspersed words and dance. Often the stage remained silent, except for the sound of the dancers’ breathing or speaking. The piece was melodic and very reminiscent of nature, and the dancers’ movements were flowing and graceful.
“The dance-making process was really rewarding,” Nowakoski said. “My dancers were extremely creative and enthusiastic about movement generation. The initial inspiration for my piece was time lapse video of plants. I’ve been researching the different stimuli that can tell a plant which direction to move in: gravity, light, touch.”
In “Body Talk,” choreographed by Sarah Taylor ’07, each dancer became the center of attention for the audience, with a focus on the dancer’s breathing. The dancers closely watched each other throughout, performing similar movements and passing motions from one to another. By constantly maintaining eye contact, the dancers connected intimately onstage.
“Her piece has a nice mix of synchronized and canon movements,” said Iwan Djanali ’09. “Sarah’s pieces always display a nice harmony between the movements and the music.”
“OurSpace,” by Julia Snippen ’07, featured dancers in schoolgirl and schoolboy uniforms with dots in mysterious patterns painted on their faces. All performers began crouched on the floor, feeling their own bodies and waving at an unknown source. Often zombie-like and menacing, the dancers engaged in activities such as eating at a frantic pace. Constantly touching their own bodies, each other’s bodies, or other spaces like the floor or the walls, the dancers eventually became animalistic and maniacal in their movements.
“For my senior project I researched a post-modern Japanese dance form called Butoh,” Snippen said. “Butoh originated shortly after World War II in Japan. Its pioneers and followers were making statements against the Westernization of their country and many of the choices the government had made that had devastated them. Their form of expression was meant to stir up discomfort in the audience, to really call attention to what they were saying.”
Snippen particularly liked the alternative nature and history of the dance.
“This was by no means an aesthetically pleasing, comforting form to take in,” Snippen said. “As I read more and more, I once chuckled to myself that Butoh was very ‘punk rock.’ The artists were rebellious and wanted their performances to be nearly assaulting to the audience at times, and they weren’t trying to conform to what already existed. And then I got the idea to compare the two as different artistic and cultural forms of rebellion. They both chose their own way of causing a splash, but they both did this for similar reasons and with similar intentions.”
Snippen’s dancers left the audience to interpret whether they were trying to catch each other or get away as they chased one another around the stage near the piece’s finale. “OurSpace” ended with the dancers all running towards and being thrown back by some unknown force, finally entering the force that had originally repelled them.
Kaitlyn O’Donnell ’07 presented “Alone and it’s quiet,” that utilized both periods of silence and sounds created exclusively by the dancers to highlight the intense movements happening on stage. The dancers pushed against one another, manipulated each other’s bodies, and eventually erupted into words, creating a forceful statement that explored the complexities of physical interaction.
“I’m researching touch and contact in contemporary choreography,” O’Donnell said. “When two bodies continually move toward one another, you get a dance that looks organic, soft, smooth, sensual, and consensual. I wanted to push that. What happens if one body is active and the other passive? You get a very different dance, because all of the sudden there are complex power dynamics involved.”
With the only live music of the night, Khalia J. Frazier ’07 presented a piece, “Tell, Tale, TAIL,” which included drum music by graduate student Elikem Samuel Nyamuame. The two dancers that began the piece followed the pace of the entrancing music and often paralleled one another. When all four dancers appeared on stage, a dance party began, set to a Charles Mingus musical piece. The dancers interacted as couples and acted out routines and practices that one would observe in everyday life.
Jacqueline Rubinstein ’07 debuted “(s)p(l)ace,” captivated the audience with its use of various mediums, including video, sound, and live dance. Using giant bouncy balls that were also featured in video pieces being projected on the back wall of the stage, the dancers interacted with the audience and each other, passing off the balls and moving against one another. The video images of them with the balls around campus were interspersed and often directly paralleled by the dancers on stage.
“I am researching how and why choreographers make work in non-theatrical spaces and use space in non-traditional ways,” Rubenstein said. “This piece started from my frustration and discomfort with the large influence architecture holds over our lives, all those straight lines and sharp corners, and grew into new places from the incredible talent, creativity, and inspirations of my dancers and videographer.”
The many different inter-pretations of what dance means and how it collides with academia provided an entertaining and thought-provoking evening of performance.
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