While many dance performances attempt to impress audience members with high kicks and fast turns, a few of Columbia’s own dancers recently brought a far more reserved production to campus.
Over the weekend, Orchesis dancers presented “along those lines: an evening of dance in five parts,” the 2010 MaMa Project, choreographed by Shilpa Vasishta, BC ’10. The performance, held in Lerner Black Box Theater, was the ninth annual installment of this project in which seniors are given the opportunity to produce a dance show. Vasishta employed clean-lined choreography to produce an engagingly introspective performance.
Vasishta divided the event into five parts that showed the evolution of the individual in conjunction with the community. “The show kind of takes you through the course of a day very loosely speaking,” Vasishta said. “And [it] also kind of takes you through different levels of how people process their world. It’s a piece that’s very interior, bodily in theme.”
Through showing the transition from an alienated individual to a unified community, Vasishta seemed to comment on the development of a college student’s identity.
In the first piece, “mornings,” dancers displayed individualized mechanical grace. Later, in the second section, titled “topsy,” movements both jerky and relaxed highlighted the discord among members of a community.
The third installment, “walls,” was an unemotional yet restless exploration of the self. Dancers resembled cleaning devices as they grasped the walls and swept the floor with their legs, clinging to architectural elements instead of other people for support.
Then, the performance shifted from a focus on the individual to the community in “bodies.” Wearing expressions resembling those of ghostly dolls, the dancers used physical contact to work off of each other. The mournful tunes of Billie Holiday combined with the brooding beats of Radiohead helped Vasishta meditate on the paradox of modern existence in which individuals attempt to move forward while remaining nostalgic for the past.
In the final piece, “the end,” the dancers showed unrestricted emotion for the first time and gathered on the floor as one community to bounce together.
“It feels like a really culminating experience for seniors,” Abbey Stone, BC ’10 and the show’s assistant producer, said. “There are six seniors in the show. This is the end.”
Vasishta and the show’s producers—Stone, Elizabeth Edwards, BC ’10, and Ally Duffey, BC ’10—created an intimate production that is a reminder of the multitude of dance organizations on campus that encourage individuals, even those with no formal dance training, to participate.
Vasishta and the producers are not dance majors but have all been members of Orchesis since their freshman year. “Orchesis has been a pretty integral experience for all of us,” said Edwards. “It’s a very intimate experience both in terms of the process leading up to the show and in terms of the show itself.”
As they reach the end of their time at Columbia, the producers had a word of advice for younger students wanting to get involved in campus performance groups. “There are a lot of opportunities in dance,” said Stone. “Take them.”
COMMENTS