Dance Concert lights up the stage

The first annual Spring Arts Festival kicked off Thursday night with the Spring Dance Concert.

 It was the third performance in a series of performances that began last weekend and it featured the F&M Dance company in works by student choreographers.  The program featured nine very different but equally creative pieces choreographed by F&M students.

 The show began with a ballet-inspired piece titled “A Series of Amiable Ambulations” and featured the choreography of Janine Granit ’12 and Christina Mueller ’12.  A medley of Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” and Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” played as dancers twirled across the stage.

 The show took a drastic turn after the first piece and shifted to a darker tone.  A bed was brought onstage and Matchbook Romance played during a piece titled “Believe”, which was choreographed by Chelsea Craig ’12. This tap piece focused on the “monsters under the bed” and it was a wonderful transition from the first piece.  

 The first half of the program offered a little of all types of dance and all types of music. From Allison Massof ’11 performing a solo piece with her back to the audience to a ballet piece titled “An Unexpected Pattern” to the final piece before intermission, a more hip-hop centered piece set to Busta Rhymes, the first act was a wonderful showcase of student’s talent both as choreographers and as dancers.

 The second act following intermission showcased a wide range of choreography and songs, all focusing on different themes.  The first piece, titled “The 3 Wayfarers”, choreographed by Tori Lawrence ’10 with input from the dancers, was a unique piece in which paper costumes and cardboard tubes added to the dance. 

 The next piece, “Threshold”, choreographed by Shana Silverstein ’10, used glow tape on otherwise black costumes to great effect. The piece ended in complete darkness, with only the glow tape visible to the audience. The lighting changed with the music throughout the piece, adding another creative aspect to the dance.

 The show shifted once again to a blue-and-green-lighted piece titled “The Subsurface Process,” choreographed by Jaclyn Malat ’11. The five dancers, dressed in either purple or green, began with no music and then shifted once the music began.

 The last piece in the show, titled “Tantra” and choreographed by Lin Nie ’10 in collaboration with Anna Stewart ’12, was inspired by pilgrims in Tibet.  The music had a more rustic, almost tribal air to it, and it shifted throughout the piece from calm to frenzied, making the dancers change their pace. It was easy to track the pilgrimage throughout the piece and the continual growth of the dancers as their journey progressed.

 The student-choreographed concert was a wonderful way to begin the Spring Arts weekend. All of the dances were diverse and showed the talent and creativity of the dance program at F&M.  The dancers did a superb job of bringing their choreographer’s visions to life, and in turn, the choreographers used the music and the dancers to create a world different from their own.

First-year Rhett Jones is a staff writer. Her email is  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it