By
Lisa Lucas
Arizona Daily Wildcat
UA dance graduate students turn dance 'inside out'
Dance majors are typically known for their flexibility and agility on stage.
Two UA dance graduate students tomorrow will show audiences their flexibility extends beyond their limbs.
"Inside Looking Out," choreographed by Tara Lee and Holly Seitz, combines live music and painting with dance to create a collaborative art/dance performance.
Seitz said the show is a portrayal of how dance can incorporate several different forms of art. Lee described it as being "multi-layered" and "very full" due to this incorporation.
"We just want to have an evening of not just dance," Lee said. "(We want to)
show how we can use dance as a partner to other things like poetry, music
(or) photography."
Elaborating on the title of the performance, Seitz said the choreographers were inspired by the modern style of dance on which the show is based.
"We (Seitz and Lee) felt that one thing that's really important about modern dance is that it comes from the inside and from the internalization of the music - (then) it comes outward," she said.
The performance includes 18 dancers - 10 dancing in the first half, which was choreographed by Seitz, and eight in the second half, choreographed by Lee.
The participants in the show, with the exception of one professional dancer and one graduate dance student, Flor De Alzate, are all undergraduate dance majors. The students were personally selected by the choreographers to participate in the show.
The first half of the show, choreographed by Seitz, features live musicians and readings of five poems by Emily Dickinson. The poems are all categorized as "meditations on death."
Seitz said she has choreographed much of the dancing in the Dickinson piece based on the characteristic punctuation used by Dickinson in her poetry.
Vocalist Martina Chylikova, a music graduate student, will accompany the composition to add the vocal element of poetry to the performance.
Seitz said she has been preparing for the show throughout the past year, although she claimed her choreographic work for the show to be a "culmination of all my experiences."
During the second half of the show, Lee's "Variation on Canvas,"
features Julie Ramsey, a two-dimensional studio art senior, who will paint on an stretch of canvas 18-feet by 6-feet while dancers perform around
her.
Lee said Ramsey will have approximately seven minutes during which to paint. Her work will be inspired directly by the music and movements used in the dance piece tomorrow evening. Ramsey described the concept behind what she will paint during the performance.
"When I see each dancer make a movement, I try to freeze that certain movement that inspires me," she said. "Each brushstroke is done through inspiration of the dancer."
Leah Miller, a dance junior and performer in "Variation," said rehearsals have been "kind of crazy" due to the fact the original painter for the piece dropped out of the performance at the end of last semester. The dancers have only had since January to work with Ramsey.
Miller described "Variation on Canvas" as a collaboration between painter and dancer.
"(Ramsey) watches us and tries to create the image on canvas," she said. "(There is) some set choreography, some improv - (movement) made up in the moment."
"(For) the set choreography, (the dancers) each have a solo," Miller continued. "(Ramsey) steps away and watches and tries to re-create the lines that we create (with our bodies). Each time we (rehearse) it, it's a different painting."
Miller described the improvisation aspects of the dance as a play on the lines Ramsey creates on canvas.
"When she (Ramsey) starts to paint, we improv," she said. "(We) mimic with our body the way she's painting."
Kristin Walker, a dance senior, emphasized the use of improvisation in the piece, saying the dancers "internalize the movement"and "react to the strokes -movement - of the (paint)brush."
UA graduate student Marlene Skog helped choreograph Lee's solo in the second half of the show. Skog worked with UA photographer Luke Stettner to create the effect of Lee dancing with her silhouette.
Using a computer program, they were able to convert the images in the Stettner's photos to the moving image of Lee's shadow.
In Lee's trio piece titled "Action Figures," lighting designers work to create a serious feeling with the dancers by depicting "unknown creatures or
figures." Lee described this piece as both "physical and athletic."
UA dance sophomore Nicole Baker said the piece includes a lot of partnering and conveys "three separate figures that find cohesion."
The show is diverse in its portrayal of the dance form and should be enjoyable to all individuals in attendance.
Following the performance will be a reception with live music by cellist Topu Lyo.
