For anyone who missed it, here’s a recap of this year’s Choreographers Showcase. Featuring student-designed choreography and performers from the Dance 2 and 3 classes, the program hosted the CdM community for Thursday and Friday night shows.
The lights dimmed, cheering figures in the crowd signaling the beginning of the show, the curtains drew open and the lights winked the stage into focus. With “Look by Leikeli47 roaring in the Seak King theatre speakers, Dance 3 was the first to grace the audience with their sparkling performance, choreographed by Ms. Beckman. Switching back and forth between Rihanna and Britney Spears the dances performed by both dance 2 and 3 were full of confidence, life, and passion.
The first act closed with a video from Backaus Dance Company who choreographed a piece demonstrating the way technology can connect and separate us. The video closed with an encouraging word from their coaches and the curtain drew once more to welcome the members of both the Dance 2 and 3 classes to the stage. Sophomore and Dance 2 member, Izzy Wang exclaimed that “the hardest part about the dance show process was putting it all together since there were multiple stops while running our dance” and Daydream Repeat was a series of intricate sequences of strutting and running across the stage.
With several moving parts to this dance alone and the show as a whole, Senior Daniela Cruz and Dance 2 member reveals that the team “had around one month to prepare our dance and for our choreographers to create the dance and teach it to us” but “the hardest part was probably doing the rehearsals after school, the few days before the show, as much as we enjoy it. It is still very tiring for both the student and the teacher.” Despite the tireless preparation, Cruz shared that her “favorite thing about the dance show was performing our group dances in front of our loved ones and showing them what we have created.” “Daydream Repeat” was just one of several group performances and Cruz shared that whenever she wasn’t on stage she would “also enjoy watching other people’s performances and see what they come up with.”
In fact, the majority of the pieces in the show were choreographed by the team’s fellow teammates. Cruz explains that as she gets to watch her friends on stage “it is amazing how many young girls create such amazing pieces.” She was truly in awe of her friends Ashley Bock and Willow Boyd who took their time to teach all of Dance 2 a powerful hip-hop performance to Rihanna’s “Breaking Dishes.”
With a total of nineteen performances the choreographer’s showcase was a poetic expression of the CdM dance program as a whole. Each dancer showed such talent in their raw emotion when their songs reflected to do so like in Sonia Bushueva and Victoria Vengina’s performance of “Stay” by Rihanna or Zoe Maher and Olivia Ostrowski’s dance to “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. November 21st and 22nd were nights to remember not just for these dancers but for those who left the Sea King Theatre feeling every bit of hard work and dedication that went into each and every movement.
