TOVE I. S. GERHARDSE
The BYU Dancensemble's 'Dance Showcase,' features a lot of variety and ranges from totally fun to quite serious and will perform in the Richards Building tonight and Friday night.
Twelve of the dances are choreographed by the students, and one dance is choreographed by the teacher, Pat Debbenham.
The 30 dancers were chosen among 65 who auditioned for the class.
'I love it, I really do. It is a good experience to have student choreography,' said Tally Kimball, a senior from Cottonwood, Calif., majoring in modern dance.
'The dances create a mood. What is interesting about dance, particularly modern dance, is that you paint pictures on the stage, like abstract art,' said Debbenham, director of the Dancensemble for three years.
Modern dance is not a narrative, but rather focuses on abstract senses and feelings, Debbenham said.
The students in the Dancensemble have varying skill levels, varying from three to ten years of experience. For some this is the first piece they have ever choreographed, Debbenham said.
It was not required for the class to choreograph a dance; however, those who wanted to, had a chance. The choreographers have been in charge of everything, including music, costumes and lighting, Debbenham said. They have also taught the other students their dance.
The students have learned to be organized, to be prepared and to be creative, Debbenham said.
'They have had a chance to figure out how to move through creative blocks, which is a life skill,' Debbenham said.
The class is a vehicle for student choreography, he said.
One of the students who has choreographed his own dance is Brent Thomas Mills, a senior from Lake Tahoe, Calif., majoring in dance and music. Mills choreographed his dance after a song called 'Love is stronger than pride,' which also is the title of his dance.
However, after the dancer felt that the choreography surpassed the music itself and that the music was holding her back, the music was omitted from the dance.
Instead of the recorded music, Mills will be improvising on the piano during the dance.
I know the movements, and I will support or dictate through the piano, and the dancer is free to go as long as she wants, Mills said.
'This is an experiment,' he added.
'I am leaving my comfort zone and not relying on the music. This concert is a good opportunity to develop ideas one always has wanted to expand,' Mills said.
This concert is totally from the student's point of view; it's not what the faculty are capable of giving to the students, Mills said.
Two other students in the Dancensemble who have created their own unique dance are Amy Richkunz, a senior majoring in dance education, and Lindsy Stewart Cieslewicz, a senior majoring in conservation biology.
Their dance is called 'Reveal Codes,' which refers to the reveal command on a computer -- symbolically one is able to see all the commands that are hidden.
In the first part of the piece, the dancers are dancing to music by Vivaldi, but in the second part there is no music. Instead, the dancers speak what they are thinking.
The dancers are very good, and it came together very quickly. At first it was spontaneous and the dancers gave a lot of input as we asked them what they were thinking when they were dancing, Richkunz and Cieslewicz said.
Cieslewicz has been in modern dance since she was a freshman at BYU. 'I have seen the Dancensemble's evolution from a less technical level to what it is now; it keeps improving every semester,' she said.