Concerts are seen as entertainment for the audience, but for the 14 BFA senior dance majors, the Senior Dance Concert is preparation for what they may experience in life after graduation.
Each senior studying dance must choreograph a solo and group piece, one in the fall and another in the spring, but on top of that, they organize and publicize the concert themselves under the guidance of artistic director and visiting professor of dance Nathan Andary.
The concert is a culmination of not just a semester of formulating ideas and putting them into action, but three and a half years of work since the students came to Ohio University as freshmen starting their composition classes.
“They’re going through a very concerted set of ideologies regarding composition that are focused on first year and then it changes for a second year and then it grows and morphs in their third year,” Andary said.
“I know when I first came here as a freshman, (composition classes were) entirely new to me,” said Emily Stepleton, a senior studying dance. “I felt really vulnerable and embarrassed when I would first create things because I always felt like … I needed to create something that looked cool, you know, something different.”
Now, Stepleton and the other dance seniors have a confidence in their work as they have progressed into their senior year, which they said led them to try new choreographing methods and processes they may not have tried earlier.
During the semester, the dance students have worked on choreographing their pieces, enlisting the help of other Dance Division students for group works. The seniors get two feedback sessions from students and faculty.
Kristopher Terry, a senior studying dance, said almost everything he did for his piece, centering on a trio examining the ideas of relationships, had him thinking outside of the box from the start.
“This is the first time that I didn’t go into each rehearsal with set movement,” Terry said. “I really wanted to make the movement organically with the dancers in front of me instead of having this plan in my head.”
Other dances examine topic matters that range from the serious, such as Lauren Slivosky’s solo inspired by women’s issues revolving around a motif as fists, to newer techniques including Liz Conway’s solo using a projector and video to examine the difference between what is real and what is virtual.
“You see over four years how you have changed and grown, and you get to have something for it,” Slivosky said. “We have a dance to show (for our work).”
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