Barnard seniors share one last dance at senior thesis performance

What’s in a dance? That which we call a senior thesis by any other format could never smell as bittersweet.

The twelve Barnard dance majors of the class of 2009 who opted to take advantage of the performance part of the senior thesis plan stood their ground Friday and Saturday nights in the Minor Latham Playhouse at Barnard. They proved not only their talents as dancers and choreographers, but also their intellect and the knowledge base they have gained at Barnard and Columbia over the past four years.

The majority of the twelve pieces seemed to stem from a strong conceptual and thematic framework. The intimacy of the theater afforded a closeness between performer and audience, making the dance and performance art all the more suggestive and immediate. As a final statement before departing from Morningside Heights, the sense that each work was a whispered testament to the seniors’ current states of mind was notable—this made the performance all the more real and engaging for the audience.

Some complained that the performance was too long with a two hour runtime, but the diversity of form, style, and content within the show made the succession much more bearable. Two comedic works, “small appliances, BIG WORLD” and “Humor Me,” choreographed by Kelly Rodal and Julia Bloch, respectively, provided fits of giggles and plenty of postmodern absurdity to a crop of complex modern and performance artworks.

“Broken Budding Bliss: An Ascent,” choreographed by Emily Bickford, was visually soothing and possessed an understated tonality. Anthony Castellanos’s repertory performance “Urban Translation” provided kinesthetic and rhythmic information to a show with many theatrical pieces.

Leda Ward’s choreography in “Same Same But Different” was suggestive, always engaging, and impressive in its integration of so many different dance devices from comedy to repetition to vocals and release technique. She and her two other dancers acted as though they were muscling through cramps to do the movement, complete with groans. “Old White Men in Lab Coats,” choreographed by Camille Avestruz, attempted to comment on mathematicians and physicists but was too explicit in the vocal narrative to accomplish and convey very much through movement.

Hadley Smith’s coded work “. . --..” included a diverse group of dancers, including one dressed in a bear suit. The piece created a strange but interesting atmosphere from which sanity could not be easily gleaned. This abstract work was followed by a lengthy solo danced by Jessica Bacon. Sarracina Littlebird performed a solo next, and it was a delightful celebration of motion, power, and grace.

After the second intermission, Jules Bakshi danced a beautiful self-choreographed solo based on a Van Gogh painting “La Berceuse.” The solo was self-contained, gracious, and bittersweet in tone. Tara Willis’s work “Circular Room,” constellated with birds, played off of the act of writing as Willis purposefully stuttering, read lines from a short story written on her limbs. The dancing in this work was sometimes overshadowed by the dramatics of Willis trying to get through her story.

The final work of the night was a duet by Emily Bock titled “tactile ellipses: a ballad of the imaginary ins and outs.” It reflected many sentiments and dynamics that were touched upon throughout the evening. It was probably the best selection to close the show with because it left one with the impression of self-realized, unapologetic, and graceful Barnard seniors.