Dance Concert | Photo by Emily Mancuso | The Wright State Guardian
On Dec. 8 and 9, dance majors performed original choreography to selections from 21 Savage to Paul McCartney on the Festival Playhouse stage.
Backstage
The student-run concert was only possible with those backstage. The fall dance concert itself has been a Wright State University staple since Head of Dance and Associate Professor Gina Walther joined WSU in 2006.
In combination with Ashley Pabst, Gina Walther served as faculty.
However, the concert was still mostly student-run, with student coordinators and producers Brianna Chan, Lexi Wilson, Emma McCaslin and Audrey Lee. Julia Dipaolo served as stage manager, calling all of the lighting and curtain cues.
“Our entire crew working in the front of the house as well as backstage were students in our program. Some of the crew danced in their pieces then pulled the ropes for their peers. The show was a very successful group effort,” Walther said.
Concert and dances
These students contended also with a bigger venue, expanding from the previous Studio 170 space, which only held room for 82 patrons, to the Festival Playhouse, which holds 250 patrons.
Most of these seats were filled during the Friday and Saturday performances. Unrestricted by dance form and music, students performed a wide variety of work and dance forms. For example, Emma Cole performed to “Don Quixote” while Chan and Wilson performed to “Gold Digger” in the finale.
Overall, the dancers repeated 20 dances on Friday and Saturday. The uniqueness of the concert and the quality of the dancers stood out to Walther.
“I watched all the technical rehearsals Monday to Thursday and two performances and could watch it again. There were subtle details and growth in our students that made watching it satisfying on many levels for me personally,” Walther said.
While Walther and the student producers met mid-fall semester to plan the concert, artistic processes varied greatly for the performing students. Some took months to perfect their fall concert choreographies, while some only took weeks.
Sophomore dance major Emma McCaslin prepared a performance of “My Baby Shot Me Down” by Nancy Sinatra a few weeks before the concert, choreographing the dance personally.
“It was very stressful, but I see this piece as almost like my baby, and it was just a very fun experience to be able to do a dance to words and be able to hit every beat,” McCaslin said.
With feedback from the dance department and fellow dancers and fall concert performers, Carly Hanson, Audrey Lee and Hannah McGuffey helped McCaslin perfect the performance.
Senior dance and arts management major Natalie Nagy, alongside partner Oliver Foster, performed “Partners in Crime” by Jay Z and Beyoncé. Both started preparing the hip-hop piece at the beginning of the semester, collaborating to create the original choreography.
“It’s always a little nerve-wracking getting in front of people, but once you get out there and just start doing your thing, you don’t want to leave, you just want to get back out there. It was a lot of fun, a lot of adrenaline pumping,” Nagy said.
Before the start of the performances, attendees were encouraged to donate to the Student Dance Fund, which, according to Walther, helps support bringing in guests and other needs of the Dance majors and minors.
The next major dance concerts are the Emerging Choreographers concert at the beginning of February and the Spring Dance Concert.
