By Claire Dietz    |   [email protected]

Eight thoughts. Eight voices. Eight dances.

After more than 20 students auditioned their choreographed pieces in the hope of being able to bring them to the stage, the Dance Department’s Graduate/Undergraduate Concert has been narrowed to eight students, a mix of graduate students and undergraduates.

The performance will open at 8 p.m. today in North Hall’s Space/Place. Performances will continue through Saturday.

Rebekah Chappell, an M.F.A. candidate, choreographed the piece “Stand in the Valley,” which tackles the subject of the “things for me [that] come to represent the baggage you carry and the things you hold onto, like boundaries or borders.”

One of the biggest challenges when choreographing a solo piece, Chappell said, is the lack of an outside eye.

“It’s always difficult when you do work on yourself, because you don’t have the ability to see outside of it and see it from an outside lens,” she said. “Since you’re in it and doing it, it can be really difficult to see what it looks like as an audience member. You have to take time watching videos of it or getting people to come in, and watch you, and give feedback on what they’re seeing.”

Chappell would like the audience to leave “feeling like they’re spectators, [but] really, they’re more like witnesses, and they can really empathize with my situation and relate to it and its feelings.”

She said dance is more than movement, it is an experience.

“I learn so much from [dance] and about myself as an artist by performing and so much about a work by performing it,” Chappell said. “There’s something about adding the presence of other people watching that allows you to get inside the piece and its magnificence in the way you can’t when you’re alone in a room.”

For her, this piece has become a reminder to live a more deliberate life.

“A lot of religious sects have the valley as the low point, the lowest of the low,” she said. “[It’s] the thing that you have to get through, persevere through.

“For me, it’s about presiding, and living, and experiencing the moment in this space and staying in it without the desire to jump to the next thing. It’s about being present in the hard and difficult times and not immediately wishing for the good times.”

It’s a lesson Charlotte Adams, a UI associate professor of dance, hopes Chappell can share with other choreographers and dancers involved in the show. Both undergrads and graduate students have the opportunity to learn from each other during Grad/Undergrad, she said.    

“Our graduate students bring a great deal of professionalism and experience to the program,” Adams said. “Many are returning professionals who come back to get their master’s degree or some come straight from undergrad, but their experience really infiltrates the whole department in a positive way.”

Seeing their pieces produced onstage, Adams said, is an immeasurably valuable opportunity.

“It’s important that [the students] have the opportunity to see their work in a final venue,” she said. “They dream about having it on stage, and they can then see it … There’s something rewarding about a work that seems completed and fully developed that can be seen on stage.”

Adams said bringing all these voices to the stage is integral to the creation of a unique experience.

“Each piece of choreography has a personal stamp, a style, things they gravitate toward,” Adams said. “It really allows students to find their voices and bring it to their dancing.”

UI sophomore Tessa Ritchey, who choreographed “The … ,”  had some difficulty finding her voice. “The …” describes the struggle of a mental block by drawing from an unusual source.

“It’s really gestural,” Ritchey said. “I started with thinking of certain words such as ‘Um,’ or ‘Namaste’ and creating a gesture for that. It started to become a writer’s block theme.”

Ritchey’s piece differs vastly from Chappell’s dance, which does not surprise dance Professor Armando Duarte.

“There’s this exchange of experience between graduate students and undergraduate students that is immensely valuable,” he said. “This is a laboratory for creativity.”

DANCE
Graduate/Undergraduate Concert
When: 8 p.m. today-Saturday
Where: North Hall Space/Place
Admission: Free with UI IDs, $6-$12