Fall dance concert invigorates stage

Author: JOYCE MAN

Middlebury College's dancers are not professionals, but they do take their dance seriously. And so, it seems, does the audience. Last Friday's sold out performance, one of two showings of a dance course's culminating Fall Dance Concert, showed what its advertisements promised-"energy, inventiveness and a collaborative spirit"-and had enough spirit left to wrap it up in some impressively vibrant costumes.

The dancers involved were all students of Artist in Residence Amy Chavasse's advanced modern dance class. Some of them have previously undergone rigorous formal training. Maxine Warren '07.5, for example, danced and performed with the Boston Ballet for nine years and Martha Underhill '07.5 attended the School of American Ballet in New York. Though Warren and Underhill were trained in ballet, for the most part, the remaining 29 students have had little prior training as modern dancers. The point of the show, however, is less a display of skill and more one of student enthusiasm and energy, and these dancers have plenty of those qualities.

"In the Same Boat," choreographed primarily by Adriane Medina '08, "Deproaching" by Colin Penley '05 and "The Beginning of our Rebellion" by Rebecca Marcus '07 were all energy-charged pieces that expanded and imploded the space onstage in all directions. Medina's piece called for dancers Virginia Benninghoff '08, Caroline Rucker '09 and Sarah Wilson '08 to arch backwards in flips and turns in a kaleidoscope of movement that bended and manipulated their relationships with each other. Penley's "Deproaching" redefined the Center for the Arts' familiar stage with movements so wide-spanning that they forced the audience to expand their peripheral vision. Fast-paced footwork and running in the well-coordinated "Beginning of our Rebellion" matched its accompanying, charged music beats back and forth and across the stage.

With this organic form of movement of modern dance, the mix of choreographic styles is bound to be eclectic. Add to that Chavasse's unique assortment of dance styles-which include Afro-Caribbean and Capoeira­-and we have the resultant smorgasbord of pieces that audiences saw on Friday and Saturday night.

The mix of melodies and beats that flowed across stage ranged from the folky Incredible String Band to French movie composer Eric Serra' synthetic sounds to the popular, recognizable tunes of Gorillaz.

The free movement exhibited in every piece reveals these dancers as students of the modern dance style, yet their ability to exchange, for example, the fluid swerves in "Still Life Dancing" with the funky jerks in the opening of "The Beginning of Our Rebellion" shows their ability to extend beyond conventional modern movements and theories, introducing their own thoughts into the movement.

"The purpose of the class is not to train these students as professional dancers," said Cheng Cheng Xu '09, who has been following the development of Medina's "In the Same Boat." "For these dancers, what is important is that they look into themselves, explore the body and discover how they can relate to each other in space."

In the process of learning these things, the students have been focusing some attention on Bill Young, who came with his dance company, Bill Young/Colleen Thomas and Dancers in the second week of October. From this performer who focuses on artist as an individual, the advanced class members learned about themselves and also about connecting with their groups as dancers. This influence combined with the dancers' and choreographers' unique, inspired vision and a sense of movement. The result was an energetic night of dance.