This weekend, seven of the U modern dance department’s third-year graduate students will reveal the results of years of research and training. There’s no pressure on these graduate students in their final year at the U — they’re about to showcase the culmination of their graduate careers.
The performance, called “Exiting,” shows work that “comes from putting theory into movement,” said Kristine Ward, modern dance graduate student. “Each of us has done a lot of reading and writing to investigate our different thesis topics, but we have also all turned to the language of movement to physicalize our thesis questions and explore them in a new way.”
Ward’s piece is a duet with fellow graduate student and former Ririe-Woodbury member Juan Carlos Claudio. Titled “The Skin’s Edge,” the piece explores a relationship in which “certain movements happen as a natural consequence of previous movements,” Ward said. The piece is “about reacting honestly,” she said.
Matthew Nelson’s piece, “Please Feel Free,” is “an investigation of how the basic principles of somatics can be useful in choreography and performance,” he said. Nelson’s aim was to “create movement from sensation,” he said — an act Ward refers to as “sumptuous” and “dripping with sensuality.”
Heather Arnett’s piece is notable for its silent score. She chose to have her dance in silence because she said that “stimuli (such as sound) can feed you information, but they can also be distracting.”
Arnett said her graduate thesis aims to answer the questions: “What can modern dance in the 21st century provide us with in terms of the?dialogue that we use for sexiness? How does it already?”
In her piece, Arnett said, she explores “what is sexy, or feels good, or is dynamic.” She wants to get audience members to ask themselves “what senses give you that information and where is it coming from?” she said.
An important point of her thesis lies in her own belief that “sexiness is (not) an attribute that we possess,” but rather “an experience that is contextually and socially based,” she said.
The show also includes works by Laura Blakely, eunkyungkim, Jacquelyn Potts and Ashley Segura.
“Exiting” will be performed at the Hayes-Christensen Theater in the Marriott Center for Dance on campus. Tickets are $7 students, $10 general and are available through the Kingsbury Hall ticket office at www.kingtix.com, by calling 581-7100 or one hour prior to the performance at the MCD box office.
Christopher PeddecordSarah Donohue and Ashley Segura rehearse Laura Blakely’s “Inside This Glass House” at the Marriot Center for Dance.