The bright stage lights began to dim. The scene was set. The audience looked upon the huddled shadows of figures in squat chairs with books in hand.

Suddenly, a faux-schoolroom was illuminated onstage with a burst of light as the song ‘Dance Anthem of the 80s’ whispered softly and then rose louder over the Goldstein Auditorium speakers. Colored tissue paper was ripped out of notebooks as dancers bounced around the stage like teenage girls from a Cyndi Lauper music video.

This pop-influenced performance would characterize the 24th annual DanceWorks showcase, held Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This year’s theme was ‘Rocking Syracuse,’ but by the responses of members of the audience, the event sported more pop and hip-hop music than classic rock.

‘For a while it had been about hip-hop and contemporary,’ said Catherine Mehta, a sophomore cultural anthropology major.

Maggie Gleason, a junior art history major, has been to the past three DanceWorks showcases. ‘In staying in correlation with a theme, it always kind of tends to stray,’ she said.

The straying theme included songs from such pop music artists as Beyoncé, Jason DeRulo, Leona Lewis, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Ke$ha and Lady Gaga. The closest rock representation came from mash-ups like Aerosmith and Run-DMC’s collaboration in ‘Walk this Way’ and a mix of Trick Daddy and Ozzy Osbourne in ‘Let’s Go on the Crazy Train.’

The DanceWorks board members choose each year’s theme. Andrea Blunda, a senior social work major, DanceWorks co-director and a member of the board, said, ‘We don’t necessarily pick songs that go along with our theme. We pick songs first and then the theme second.’

Although the theme did not directly correlate to the songs, most members of the audience said their expectations were met. ‘DanceWorks is better than Christmas,’ said Caitlin Guthoff, a senior television, radio and film major. ‘It’s the gift that keeps giving.’

Casey O’Brien, a sophomore advertising major, had positive reactions to the event. ‘I think it was great,’ she said. ‘There were a lot of girls in my sorority in here, so I came to support it. They did a really good job,’ she said.

O’Brien said she thought the Britney Spears piece was especially entertaining, referring to the ‘Kill the Lights’ performance of the second act.

The dancers were decked out in red tops with black pants for the routine. ‘Kill the Lights’ quickly rolled to ‘Circus,’ where the dancers bounced around stage with candy canes and then to ‘Slave,’ in which performers swayed their hips in sultry choreography and dancers crawled through open legs. The most enduring image from the piece was the ending. As the song ‘Oops!…I Did It Again’ blared the lyrics ‘I’m not that innocent,’ up from a crowd of kneeling dancers emerged two female performers with guilty expressions on their faces.
However, the choreography was not without its critics. Audience members panned some dances for being off-beat, though they still felt the event as a whole was successful.

‘There are some acts that were a little sloppy here and there,’ said Griffin Bohen-Meissner, a sophomore English major. ‘People were a little off-beat. Everyone’s doing a great job, but there’s still room for improvement.’ Bohen-Meissner said he felt that ‘Between the Lines,’ a slower-paced ballad song, did not have a clean-cut execution of the moves, referring to the performance as ‘iffy.’

Blunda said that performing on stage is harder than it looks.

Marisa Campbell, a choreographer and sophomore public relations major, said there is a lot of pressure on dancers for the opening performance.

O’Brien said that she felt that the performances had a lot of energy.

The audience certainly responded to that energy. After every dance, high-pitched, primarily female, screams would leap up from the audience in praise of the performances. There was also the occasional ‘I love you’ cheer from the audience in the lapse between pieces.
‘Magic,’ a mash-up of ‘Whatcha Say,’ ‘Tik Tok,’ ‘3’ and ‘Bad Romance,’ elicited some of the loudest applause of the night.

But into the confusing mix of high-energy songs were low-energy, reflective and thoughtful dances. One of these was ‘Belief,’ a song passionately dedicated to those who have fought breast cancer and those supporting someone with breast cancer, according to the program.

‘I thought it was good of them to put it in, especially because Relay for Life is coming up this month,’ Mehta said.

Audience members disagreed that the performances did not fit the theme of Rocking Syracuse, but overall many enjoyed the event due to the passion and energy that was exhibited on stage.

Juliana Potter, a choreographer and senior public relations major, said everyone in the show had a great time. She said though there are always going to be kinks in the show, she thought the dancers and choreographers did a wonderful job.

‘Honestly, what dancing is about is showing yourself off,’ Potter said, ‘and showing your personality through the art of dance.’

ajswab@syr.edu

 

 

 

Published on March 8, 2010 at 12:00 pm