Department of Dance holds end-of-year concert

You're probably neck deep with final papers and exams this week, but how do you test a dance student? Papers and blue books only go so far in the study of a performance art. That's why we are fortunate that many of the best works of dance that have been created over the semester for various classes are debuted at the end-of-year Departmental Concert.

Music is almost always played during the performance of dance and can be integral to the message intended by the artist. In this case the use of lyrics, even if in French, can be a bit distracting from the explicitly non-verbal art of dance and may have divided this reviewer's attention from the otherwise fast-moving and fun first piece "De Passage." However, this was merely an excerpt from a BFA thesis concert to be held next March and you, dear reader, will have to wait until then to catch a full review if you don't go see it yourself.

Mastery of one's body and the use of it to create beauty is a central definition of being a dancer and the evening's second piece "Movement Exploration in Progress" turned this notion on its head. After only a few seconds Erin Cassanega falls flat onto the floor. She then began a series of halting insecure motions that also soon led to her repeated collapsing, interspersed with interesting movements as she rolled, crawled and pushed herself across the stage. Three separate 'epochs' occurred in this piece, as Ms. Cassanega seemed to illustrate the process of learning to dance, a path that leads from awkward falling through joyful if imprecise motions and finally to a self-confident beauty. Erin Cassanega held an electric stage presence and received heated applause at the conclusion of a piece that was both experimental and fun-lovingly playful.

A single string of rope served as the sole prop of the next piece, "Archetypically Sketched." This intelligent performance by Lauren Drake and Kay Stewart began as the two appeared in identical black uniforms near the end of the rope which snaked across much of the stage. The two girls' bodies never stopped touching as they slid over each other or copied the other's motions to a tee. Eventually they were largely on the ground together and proceeded to entangle themselves in the rope, rolling it up onto their bodies with little use of their hands. The two then became umbilically attached to one another with this string as the performance ends. The motions made by the dancers in this piece were not dramatic, but they did not need to be. This was in many ways a psychological performance dealing with the issues of friendship and identity rather than a physical display.

"The struggle for ebullience," or the struggle for exuberance and life, was far more dark and complex than even the previous work. This was perhaps the strangest and most mournful performance of the semester. An ever-changing number of similarly clad female dancers displayed either indifference or downright violent hostility to each other. Aesthetically pleasing and recognizable dance motions were here heavily interspersed with movements of the bizarre, such as the seemingly suicidal jabbing that each dancer directed against herself and a writhing sort of behavior where each girl curled into herself and appeared to be brushing off ants or other vile creatures that one would see only on a bad hallucinogen. One shy Sophomore girl favored this piece the most of the entire night, stating that "the motions flowed with one another perfectly."

After intermission, the audience soon learned more about Melissa Pihos than we perhaps wanted to. Apparently Ms. Pihos is a Masters student of dance but this reviewer can say nothing about her talent because she did not perform. Instead the audience ended up watching a self-produced documentary about her father's declining health and how important he was to her. Whether or not you like documentaries you certainly do not expect to see one during a dance concert, especially when not a single frame of dance was shown.

Testing boundaries of the art continued with "Self-Refraction" where YouTube even made an appearance. Dance, like theater or live music, unavoidably contains elements of improvisation in each performance. This is a good thing when it keeps an art from tiring. Loren Groenendaal offered a glimpse of the possible future of dance with an improvised dance inspired by three video clips of her earlier work which had been voted on by YouTube watchers and shown to the audience. A curious innovation.

There was no better piece to end the evening with than "caught up in it" which employed seven dancers and resounded with color and motion. Beneath a track of jazz which quickly grew discordant and aesthetically challenging, the girls kept their poise as they often performed movements in unison and other times worked in pairs or singly. One girl would intimately wrap her arm around the belly of another and then gently knee her from behind, leaving her to lie on the floor after this treatment. This became a theme within the extremely complicated choreography of this piece. It is hard to believe that this was created for DCE 343, an intermediate level class. This piece was as ambitious in scope as it was flawlessly performed. A pleasant ending to a fall's worth of excellent art. Don't let another semester pass you by without seeing modern dance at least once, after it resumes in February.