"Don't tell Mama," but this weekend, Brown students will be "Shakin" at the Ashamu Dance Studio on Waterman Street. These are the titles of two of the choreographies that comprise this year's Fall Dance Concert, which opens tonight and runs through Sunday.
The concert is a representation of Brown's diverse dance community with a wide variety of dance styles - including belly dancing, tap, contemporary hip-hop, jazz and classical ballet - and an equally eclectic selection of music, including traditional Indian music, the Temptations and Missy Elliot.
Produced by Body and Sole, an umbrella organization that unites Brown's various dance groups, the concert provides an opportunity for student choreographers to showcase their work. During the selection process for the concert, choreographers and dancers present an already-prepared piece twice to a board comprised of faculty and students, according to Julie Strandberg, senior lecturer in the department of theater, speech and dance. After the first round, the groups receive feedback and are given a chance to improve their pieces. The final dances are selected during a second round of evaluation, Strandberg said.
"We chose the best drafted, best developed and best performed within each genre," she explained. "We didn't want a bunch of pieces that all looked alike."
The concert opens with "Get Your Drink On," an East-meets-West piece choreographed by Tiffany Chen '10 that combines the traditional Chinese cup dance - native to Inner Mongolia - with contemporary hip-hop, exploring themes of transition and adaptation. The piece is initially set in a Chinese feast, with clinking cups and graceful movements that depict joyous yet polite hospitality. The dancers then switch gears to the beats of Missy Elliot's "Get Your Freak On" and J-Kwon's "Tipsy" while still holding a cup in each hand, celebrating the old and the new simultaneously.
Another piece,"Kish Bish," which is Hindi for "mish-mash," is choreographed by Julia Vazquez '09 with help from Herald Senior Staff Writer Nandini Jayakrishna '10 and Shruti Parekh '10 and blends traditional Indian dance with modern styles.
"The Lament of Gilgamesh" experiments with staging. The piece opens with a dancer suspended from the ceiling, curled up in a contraption made of ropes, as another performer, Miya Perry '08, lays flat on the floor playing the cello. To Perry's ominous melody, the dancers' often strange, animalistic movements depict primitivism and physical pain coupled with human emotions of grief.
On a lighter note, the sexy, mischievous jazz piece "Don't Tell Mama" takes the audience into the scandalous Kit Kat Klub, creating the feel of a smoky, dark cabaret. Inspired by musical theater and choreographed by Ashley Chung '08, "Don't Tell Mama" includes lip-synching and dramatic gestures that contain a tinge of mockery, though overall, the piece is light and enjoyable to watch.
Other pieces, such as "A New Understanding," an expressive solo by Dianna Anderson '09 and "The Statue at Czarskoe-Selo," choreographed by Autumn Graham '09 are mellower. "Czarskoe-Selo,"a short, bittersweet, moving ballet piece accompanied by two student musicians, Ian Sherman '08 on the piano and Nora Blackall '07.5 singing, evokes a feeling of solitude as two dancers simultaneously take the stage yet appear to be moving in separate worlds. The piece seems intentionally anticlimactic, as the only attempt to forge a connection between the dancers is marked by just a fleeting touch.
"Everyone has their own take and angle on it," said Blackall, who chose the song from an album of Russian revolutionary music she came across during the summer. "I pictured it as a clip from a black and white film. These people, in the middle of a chaotic turnover in their home, get together and make something pure, simple and beautiful to escape from it all," she said.
The concert also includes an authentic belly dance, a tap dance to Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" and a traditional Indian solo dance.
While established student dance groups such as Fusion and Badmaash put the majority of the pieces together, their names are not all included in the program. "We wanted to focus on the choreographers," Strandberg said.
Though she acknowledged it is often difficult for independent dancers not in student dance groups to become involved in the concert, Strandberg said the purpose of the Fall Dance Concert is to give student choreographers a chance to showcase their work while also representing the diverse cultures and talents that make up Brown's artistic community.
