Flooding into the Helms Theater last month, the audience eagerly awaited the Fall Experimental Dance Concert. While people were still taking their seats, seven dancers meandered onto the stage in three-minute intervals, forming a straight line. The audience buzzed with confusion at the dancers’ early entrance.
Suddenly, a stately dancer entered from stage right. With smooth, deliberate steps, and chin raised high, she crossed the stage. The lights dimmed. “No Body Knows: Landscape #5,” choreographed by Drama adjunct faculty member Katie Schetlick, began. A tall male dancer shot his hand straight up and began rotating it like a windmill, which propelled him toward the next dancer in line. With one hand, he covered her eyes until the entire line stood connected and “blind.” Just as the last male dancer in the line was about to be blinded, he snatched the hand coming toward his face and led the line across the stage, snaking and swirling. Lights from above refracted off crystals in the air, sending a frenzy of shimmer over the performance. All the while, a low bluegrass tune echoed “nobody knows … nobody sees.”
Breaking apart into trios and duets, the dancers attempted to uncover their eyes and to escape their enclosure with uncontrolled flinging gestures, before falling asleep on the floor. When awakened, they gazed around the space and began coming together, pressing shoulder to shoulder. They came to a resting place, seeing the world of refracting lights around them with new eyes.
The show continued with a joyful movement exploration titled “To Choose Sun” by third-year Commerce student Tara Bonanno, and “Narrowly Missing Normal,” a brooding, dimly lit dance on isolation by Education graduate student Carly Donnelly.
Following these, a dance for film titled “Minutes,” choreographed by Dance Program Director Kim Brooks Mata, explored communication through time lapses. Finally, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” by fourth-year College student Tera Crenshaw concluded the first half with an exploration of pathways and structured motion.
After a brief intermission, the stage again flooded with nine dancers performing “Shatter Proof” by Brooks Mata, a dance expressing a community shattered by loss.
Following this, “{untaught},” choreographed by second-year Engineering student Michelle Faughnan, juxtaposed the carefree nature of child-like motions with the restriction of rote repetition.
Education graduate student Janelle S. Peifer next presented a piece on rest titled “even still,” a dance laden with authentic touch and weight sharing.
“Permanent Mo(ve)ments” by creator Stéphane Glynn, a fourth-year College student, treated the audience to another dance film. Duets and trios featured dancers chasing each other down brick pathways, walking down the Downtown Mall while the world passed by at high speed and ambling over grassy hills. Masterful editing and camera angles showcased the importance of a single glance or gesture in communicating the essence of the depicted relationships.
The night concluded with “Carving Light from Earth” by Drama adjunct faculty member Dinah Grey. The lights came up on a clump of seated forms clad in deep red gowns. The dancers began to extend their limbs into the space with an anemone quality, waving gracefully and then striking the air. So in sync were the movements with the eerily high-pitched and rumbling score that the dancers appeared to call forth the sound with their entrancing cascades of motion. As the music reached its crescendo, the dancers reared back with legs and arms extended high, gradually sunk back into earth, drew into their original grouping and stood tall. The lights dimmed, imprinting the audience with a final image of nine striking women in red.
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