Process Log: Ascension
making dance and community in a time of separation
Northampton, MA – The Smith College department of dance is pleased to present the 2021 Senior Dance Concert Process Log: Ascension on April 16 at 8PM and April 17 at 2PM. The 5 graduating seniors, Catherine Davis, Kiara Mickens, Mayeline Peña, Talia Preis, Auxenia Grace Privett-Mendoza, explore making dance and community in a time of separation. The concert will be live broadcast from Hallie Flanagan Studio Theatre on the Smith College campus for a remote audience on Vimeo. People can register for the free event at https://seniordance.eventbrite.com.
On a recent Saturday, with spring finally in the air, Auxenia Grace Privett-Mendoza rehearsed with her cast of four dancers in the courtyard of the Mendenhal Center for the Performing Arts while the strains of Chopin drifted from an open window of Sage, the Smith College music building. The dancers wear masks and sneakers. Auxenia’s piece An Anomaly in the Deep explores the significance of, relevance of, and relatability to water and her cycling. This piece asks, “what do we cycle through – around what do we revolve? what resurfaces/remains?”
The piece along with four others will be performed and broadcast live with cast and crew observing strict COVID protocols of limited capacity, physical distancing and mask wearing. It will be the Smith Dance Department’s first attempt at a live, virtual concert. The production will use sthree cameras and live switching to bring the performance stage to audiences’ screens.
Catherine Davis, whose piece Tides Returning is set on five dancers, has rehearsed with some cast members in studio and some on Zoom. They also took advantage of the warmer weather to try a run-through in costume on the Tyler lawn. Tides Returning explores the non-linear nature of life and recovery, something that all of us have been dealing with during the pandemic. Catherine’s piece suggests that the highs and lows we experience need not be opposite ends of a spectrum, but can be knit together.
Kiara Mickens is exploring how the Strong Black Woman acknowledges the generational cycles she has been thrown into. In her piece, Source Return, 3 dancers will represent past, present and future. “In a society that thrives on exploitation and weak mind conditioning, remembering our true purpose within it is one of the most powerful things we can do.”
In Patchouli Oil Mayeline Peña invites the audience to ask itself where do your moves come from, who is in your body, what moves have names, and which ones don’t? May’s piece uses spoken narrative to examine her family’s relationship to merengue and how culture, faith, and ritual inform her movements and dance creation.
The only student not performing live for the broadcast is Talia Preis who is completing her senior year remotely. She will be presenting two digital dance films, Glass Pocket and Naturally, that explore the relationships between the moving body, time, and spatial rhythms, in homage to her native land, O’ahu, Hawai’i. Talia, who is minoring in Film and Media Studies, welcomes the challenge to express her movement ideas for the camera. “If one considers the theater with its proscenium arch as a site for the performance of dance, then one might also consider film/video, with its specific frame size (or aspect ratio, the relationship of width to height) as a sort of architectural space as well.”
The five choreographers have created a website to stay connected during this hybrid semester. Each week they contribute to this “process log” – sharing their progress through rehearsal videos, drawings, and creative questions. They titled the concert in honor of this shared space with the addition of “Ascension” as if to say that together on this journey, they will rise.
To view the live broadcast on April 16 at 8PM or April 17 at 2PM, register at https://seniordance.eventbrite.com.