Club showcases student engineered dances
With live musicians, workshops and daily technique classes during the summer, the choreography club came well prepared for its first showcase of the year, Engineering Movement.
During its summer workshops, the choreography club had 47 dancers and created 26 original dances. Of those 26 pieces, 10 dances were chosen to be showcased at the concert.
“It’s the perfect environment for choreographers to dance and create,” said Isabella Arnett, co-president of the club and modern dance major.
After a few technical glitches and a dancer mistake (one dancer accidently rolling on top of the other), the club quickly recovered and gave the audience an amazing performance. While watching the show, to the untrained eye it may have seemed like the movements, music and dancers were all off-beat and not in sync. But this was further from the truth. This collection of many modern and a few ballet dances made for a great evening of dance.
The best dance of the night was titled Flight of the Wolf, choreographed by Rebecca Penn-Pierson, a junior dance major with an emphasis in ballet. She expressed her love for dance through her words and spectacular choreography skills.
“When I discovered dance later in life, I knew I had found my home; the love of my life is ballet. … The sedative to my restless soul is dance,” Penn-Pierson said.
The most eye-catching dance of the night was titled Pending and was choreographed by Isabella Arnett. This number was especially interesting because, despite the modern dance flair, all the dancers were in sync with their movements, and they went well with the music. It appeared the dance was meant to fit the music, rather than the music picked to fit the dance. Unlike a few of the other dances, this one had emotion, purpose and kept the audience entertained through frequent changes of pace.
Various crowd members agreed that Pending was a great dance, but others picked different dances that stuck out to them for various reasons.
“My favorite dance was Mouche. … It had a different feel. [It] was more upbeat and the movement was neat,” Jamie Arnett said.
Elizabeth Hansen, a general studies sophomore, expressed liking the dance Enjoy the Silence. She thought that is was different than the others and thought the music and movements worked well together.
As dancers and choreographers, the students are very talented and have a lot of potential in their future dancing endeavors. As for the club, it’s going to be interesting to see how the club grows and the other amazing dances they will produce over the next few years.
