Montana Bass ’18
Hours of collaboration, choreography, and rehearsal culminate next week with 2015’s Dance Workshop performances. This year’s show entitled “Still Standing,” takes place Friday, Nov. 6, at 8 p.m., and Saturday, Nov. 7, at 2:30 and 9 p.m. in Armstrong Theatre.
The show features 14 pieces, exhibiting a wide range of dance styles from modern, to swing, to hip-hop. The dancers, led by co-chairs, Alison Rowe ’16 and Evans Levy ’18, had to pull things together more quickly this year, with performances taking place during Block 3, as opposed to the middle of Block 4 as in years past. “Still Standing” came together an entire month earlier, so for Rowe and Levy, show planning began before the start of the academic year, as they worked to choreograph a try-out dance for auditioning performers. In the first week of Block 1, they held choreographer auditions, where students looking to choreograph numbers for the show presented their ideas. “We ask you to present everything you have,” Levy said of the audition process. “Show us the song, if you have choreography, share what you’re inspired by, how many dancers you want, anything and everything you can tell us about the piece. We try to make sure it’s a well-rounded show. We want to know you have the drive to put the piece together.”
Then, more than 100 student dancers auditioned for Rowe, Levy, and the selected choreographers; dancers may be chosen to perform in up to three numbers. This is the most stressful part of the process, according to Levy. “It can be hard to get choreographers to cast people they don’t know and step out of their comfort zone.” Over the next two months, choreographers and dancers go to work practicing individual pieces once or twice a week, while the co-chairs continue work to set the schedule for tech rehearsals, finalize the order of the numbers for the show, develop publicity materials for the event, and, Levy notes, send “about a billion emails.”
The week before the show may be both the most hectic and the most exciting according to Levy. “The pieces evolve so much during that week. When you put the pieces on stage, people realize there’s actually going to be a performance and that’s when it really starts to look like a show,” said Levy. “I’m really excited to see the first run through and see how the pieces have come together.” For everyone involved, the shows are a source of pride. Dancers experience the high of performing on stage, choreographers see a once-vague vision play out, and the co-chairs reap the satisfaction of seeing the show go on, despite a multitude of challenges and problems that may have arisen along the way.
“Overall it’s really cool to be a part of something so big,” Levy said. “This is the biggest student-run performance event and I didn’t realize how much work went into it, but I appreciate it all the more because of that. There’s such a community that’s built around it and so many friendships that are made.”
