The culmination of junior dance students’ work will be on display two nights this week, as part of the School of Dance’s annual Spring Dance Concert.
Student choreographers for the concert took skills they learned in their composition classes to create choreography for the dances, whether it is a solo or a piece for groups of dancers.
Emma Rumberg, a junior studying dance, said the choreographer had to come up with an idea and base their composition on it. Her piece, a trio, was based on a painting called “Side of St. George” by Paul Jenkins.
“There are a lot of sweeping lines of color that sort of intersect at a certain point,” Rumberg said. “There are a lot of aggressive lines across the canvas, but there are also points where the colors just sort of bleed and fade into one another. I used those ideas to create movement for my piece.”
The ideas for the pieces could have come from anything, Rumberg said, and Liz Conway, a junior studying dance, echoed her sentiment.
“It was scary at first, because normally we’re given a set of guidelines or a prompt to go off of,” Conway said.
Conway is performing a solo she choreographed herself. She said her idea came from spending time in a pool, and being in water, while Irene Davey, a junior studying dance, said her post-apocalyptic themed dance took inspiration from T. S. Eliot poem, “The Hollow Man.”
The dance faculty chose the pieces in the concert by an adjudication process, which included a performance of the students’ pieces in front of a faculty panel.
“If the choreographer followed through with their idea throughout the piece, and if they used the space, and all of the elements within the dance, we are looking from that perspective,” said Chengxin Wei, professor of dance and concert coordinator.
Also in the program is a piece called “The Life of Conversation,” which was choreographed by Xan Burley and Alex Springer, a professional duo from New York who worked with the dance students master classes for two-week during the semester.
Nine OU students are in the piece, which Tresa Randall, assistant professor of dance and rehearsal director of the work, said was unique because of the collaboration in setting movement between the professionals and the students.
“It is also such a great experience for the students that (Xan and Alex) made (the piece) specifically for them,” Randall said. “This one is very much about these particular students.”
If You Go
What: Spring Dance Concert
Where: Shirley Wimmer Dance Theater, Putnam Hall
When: Thursday and Friday, 7:30 p.m.
Admission: Free with OU student ID, $8
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