Dance Concert: Dancing With the Environment

PROGRAM

EARTH
Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance Susie Thiel explores the profound and often unconscious ways society interacts with sustainability and the environment in her new dance work, Unconscious Consumption. Along with eight talented dance majors, the choreography blends jazz and modern contemporary styles, mirroring the evolution of societal awareness—starting with the relentless pace of unconscious choices and shifts into a reflection on the balance between human actions and the environment. At its core, Unconscious Consumption asks: How do our decisions—both conscious and unconscious—shape our relationship to each other and the Earth?

WATER
Guest Artist Janie Morgan invites audiences into the elemental world of water, exploring its motion and commotion as it transforms from a peaceful ocean into the chaotic force of a hurricane. Through a dynamic collaboration with a diverse group of 13 dedicated dance students, Morgan brings to life an abstract interpretation of water’s powerful forces, using movement to explore the motion and commotion of ocean water as a hurricane forms and moves across water. 

AIR
Zephyr, a new work by faculty choreographer Laura Neese, explores air - an evasive entity noticed primarily by its movement or its absence. Drawing inspiration from weather patterns, fluid dynamics, and breath as physiological and spiritual life force – Zephyr inhabits peregrine patterns and textures from turbulent to tranquil, buoyed by Caroline Shaw’s mercurial Partita for 8 Voices.  

FIRE
Each year the Department of Theatre and Dance selects a dance major to choreograph for the Annual Dance Concert.  Senior, double Dance and Arts Administration major, Jasmine Singer creates choreography set on nine dance majors. Phoenix is a contemporary modern dance piece that explores the elemental force of fire. Through a dynamic blend of movement and imagery, the dancers embody fire’s raw energy, strength, and destructive power, while also capturing its transformative beauty. The work explores fire not only as a physical element, but also as a metaphor for one’s inner fire, the concept of twin flames, and growing the burning drive within us all.

SPACE
Pinpoints of light paint the celestial sphere. Heavenly bodies stretch time beyond the infinite.  The expansive void of emptiness contains all matter. Resident Choreographer Theresa Bautista explores the creation of the universe, the formation of galaxies and foreign worlds, and the interplay between cosmology and the interiority of existence, the universe within one’s self.  Verses attempts a conceptual journey through space and time, fusing the unending expanse of light with the finality of existence.  Can we navigate the multiverse while remaining tethered to time?  Space is the place. We are the cosmos.