Eastern Michigan University’s Advanced Composition class will present its semester-end dance concert Synergy! on April 17 at 7:30 p.m. in 106 Warner in the REC/IM.
Nine students have choreographed modern group dances as a culmination of the class.
Junior Danielle Clevenger choreographed one of the dances. Her piece focuses on an internal struggle.
“It’s a really high-level show,” she said. “One of the best we’ve had. I think the pieces are incredibly diverse. We’ve really got some really incredibly creative ones.”
All of the student choreographers created solo pieces in the Fall 2014 semester in Elements of Composition. Some of the dances developed the solos into group pieces. The dances each have four to seven dancers.
Clevenger said while working with multiple dancers doesn’t seem complicated, “when you haven’t worked with groups before, it’s quite a few bodies to be moved around.”
Many of the choreographers are also dancing in other student’s pieces. Dancers were chosen through open auditions.
Clevenger said she was looking for dancers who worked well with partnering.
“I really wanted dancers who were happy working with each other, good with weight sharing [and] could lift and move each other around the stage,” she said.
She said choreography is a learned skill like learning a new language.
“You get that dance vocabulary and the more you expand that vocabulary, the better off you are,” she said. “It helps you pick up things quicker and you remember them better.”
Clevenger said after rehearsing a dance, it is like “it’s in our bodies.”
“With the dances themselves, you practice them over and over until, even if you can’t consciously think of what’s coming next, your body knows,” she said. “Which is nice, because then it actually frees you up to perform within the moment.”
The concert is free.
The dances and choreographers are as follows:
- Somnambulation - Alison Armstrong
- You are a Product - Brooke Murphy
- The Fugue from Existance - Andrea Aya Mercado
- There Serenity of a Storm - Madeleine Mortier
- Spheniscidae - Jacklyn Helman
- Pathways - Kyler Huss
- Aluremen(o)t - Megan Scheppelman
- Stress Test - Michelle Dollyhigh
- Inside Ourselves - Danielle Clevenger
