Free dance showing!

Come support our dance students as they present work developed this school year! This event is open to everyone. See you there! 

A Taste of Africa at the Upcoming Spring Dance Show

Dance student Robert Gardner gives us a sneak peak at one of the pieces that will be featured in this year's Spring Dance Showcase. 

 

We are entering the home stretch of rehearsals for the Spring Dance Show and have only one rehearsal left for Naby Bangoura’s West African dance piece. Naby is a dance teacher from New Guinea, Africa and teaches West African dance at USF as well as dances classes at ODC. It has been two years since the last West African dance piece in a USF Dance Ensemble concert and it will definitely be worth the wait.

     I am shocked to see how quickly this piece has come together. Naby only has rehearsal once a week and has worked all of us into one cohesive, full bodied, energetic dance piece in the two hour span that he has us. This is my first time working with Naby and also my first time doing West African dance. I couldn’t believe the stamina and energy West African dance takes. The warm up alone definitely gets the blood flowing and your muscles working. Something that took some getting use to was not always going by counts like the normal 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, but instead following the rhythm of the music and listening for cues within the music. Another aspect that took some getting use to was the idea of not pointing my feet all the time. Whenever my foot left the floor it would want to point when it should have been flexed, but I eventually got it. 

     The piece is basically divided into three sections and each section is just as exciting as the last. I cannot wait for this piece to be shown to an audience and to hear the amazing song that Naby has taught us. It is sure to get you clapping and cheering for sure. So make sure to come and check out Naby’s work next week at the Spring Dance Show at Presentation Theater. You will not be disappointed!

Naby Bangoura’s dance piece is part of the upcoming Spring Dance Performance featuring USF's Dance Ensemble. The show will take place at Presentation Theater on April 30th and May 1st at 8pm. 

Spring Dance Show will feature "Dark Fairy Tale"

Dance student Erin Hewitt gives us a sneak peak at one of the pieces that will be featured in this year's Spring Dance Showcase. 

With only two weeks to go until opening night, working on Natalie's Greene's piece is still as exciting as the very first rehearsal. Natalie is a dance instructor for the USF Performing Arts and Social Justice department, teaching classes such as Jazz Theater and Dance Outreach: where students learn to teach dance to elementary school students. Her wide range of abilities and interests really comes through in this piece. This "dark fairytale" has so much going on, it's hard to describe one specific focus of the work...but I'll try!

     I think the piece has a great sense of wonder, curiosity and whimsy. The large cast is divided into two elements. The larger group is investigating the elements of nature and the small ensemble is representing the young, and often foolish, humans. There's a sense of controlled chaos, like a storm that could happen at any moment. Natalie is a great collaborator and artist, and with such a large ensemble it's been great to see her use everyone's strengths (and the visual power of so many bodies on stage) to create a powerful image of the universe...and what little we really understand about it.

     Whew! That seems like a whole lot of heavy stuff! I bet you're wondering how we've been working towards the finished product. Obviously we've been trying to step into the choreographer's mind, listening to her ideas and what inspired her to make the piece. But, because we're not psychic, Natalie gave us all cute little notebooks to write in. As we wrote about song lyrics, fairy tales, our relationships to nature and more, we were rewarded with brightly colored stickers!! And, ya know, lots of artistic collaboration. 

Photo by Erin Hewitt

I hope I've piqued your interest, or at least confused you into a state of curiosity. It's been a lot of hard/fun work, and we want to share it with you! Be sure to come check out our dance and all the other awesome pieces in this years Spring Dance Concert.

Natalie Greene's dance piece is part of the upcoming Spring Dance Performance featuring USF's Dance Ensemble. The show will take place at Presentation Theater on April 30th and May 1st at 8pm.

Students and faculty collaborate in preparation for Spring Dance Performance

Dance student Eric Garcia gives us a sneak peak at one of the upcoming dance pieces that will be featured in this year's Spring Dance Performance.

It is now around week 8 of rehearsals and it is exciting to see the progression of this piece. Going into this, I was told very little about choreographers Amie Dowling and Eli Nelson’s plans. As director of the dance department and adjunct professor, respectively, they are a creative team of unquestionable caliber, notorious for their out-of-the-box approach. They gave us strange clue words such as light bulbs, curtains, and ballroom. Whatever you are thinking right now is exactly what I was thinking; I wasn’t quite sure how all of these things would come together to make a cohesive, contemporary dance piece… but then, I must have totally forgotten who I was working with. Of course Amie and Eli would incorporate obscure things like that—shame on me! I wouldn’t expect anything less from those two. 

Photo by Kat Cole
 

      Having previously worked with each of them separately in two different pieces at USF, it has been really exciting to see how their minds work together. The other dancers and I go into every rehearsal not knowing what to expect, which keeps the process fun for both the choreographers and the dancers. We try a little bit of everything: learning set choreography, improvisational structures, and using material generated by us, the dancers. A major part of this process is experimenting with what different types of qualities each dancer can bring, allowing for personal style to blend with collaborative movement. Fortunately, we get to rehearse in Presentation Theater (the actual theater we will be performing in), so it allows us to really explore the space. Interestingly, it has sort of evolved into a site-specific piece to the theater itself, evoking curiosity from all of us about both the space and the movement. I’m sure the audience will enjoy watching it just as much as I have enjoyed performing it. Stay tuned.   

Amie Dowling and Eli Nelson's dance piece is part of the upcoming Spring Dance Performance featuring USF's Dance Ensemble. The show will take place at Presentation Theater on April 30th and May 1st at 8pm.