For weeks, Allan Hancock College dance students have been breaking in their dance shoes and learning the limits of what the human body can do in preparation for the dance program’s Dance Spectrum, showing March 17 to 21 in the Marian Theater on campus.
The show has students logging dozens of toe-tapping hours in addition to their regular dance curriculum, but the effort will be, for many, their first exposure to the performance side of dance. Some students will be choreographing for the first time. Others are facing their first performance in front of an audience. All of them will gain insight from an exchange of beginners’ ideas and staff and veteran student dancers’ experience.
The show will mix 11 original dances choreographed by faculty and students, covering a broad spectrum of styles: ballet, jazz, modern, tap, character dance, and hip hop.
Faculty member Larissa Nazarenko will direct a cast of more than 50 dancers. She’ll also choreograph, as well as perform in a piece.
“We try to represent all styles of dancing and employ all different levels of dancers,” she said.
Nazarenko joins a crew of talented staff and student choreographers, including Kellie Claverie, Kimberly Eaton, Courtney Grimnes, Horacio Heredia, Zheila Pouraghabagher, and Ben Reyes. Student choreographers contributing work are Jonathan Calderwood, Jeff Larsen, Brent Lewis, and Courtney Rosemont.
The long hours of practice and rehearsal aren’t the only challenges in putting on Dance Spectrum. This year, students are anticipating a potentially smaller audience.
“It’s been tough selling tickets,” Nazarenko said. “Usually by this time we would have a lot more tickets sold.”
Last year’s Dance Spectrum saw a run of last-minute ticket sales in the days leading up to opening night, but sales at this time last year were still higher. Nazarenko said a smaller turnout would be unfortunate because ticket sales are critical to the dance program—and ultimately to the students’ dance experience. Proceeds from the sales go back into the program to keep it running, provide costumes, and “pay the bills,” Nazarenko explained.
“Dance students need to perform on stage to be completely trained,” she said. “They need to get that experience on stage.”
Courtney Rosemont is one of those students. In her second semester in the dance program, Rosemont has been a performer but tried her hand at choreography for Dance Spectrum. Her piece is tap with a mixture of jazz fusion. For sound, she wanted something bigger, something electronic, and something with very particular beats and sporadic sounds that would blend with the percussion of tap shoes. Her vision included a variety of elements that seemed difficult to blend, but ended up doing so seamlessly.
“It’s kind of chaotic in a sense of how the different sounds go together, but it totally works,” Rosemont said.
The whole process didn’t go as smoothly, however. Rosemont said she gained a new appreciation for choreography because of the challenges she had to overcome for Dance Spectrum, mostly in bringing an
idea out from her head and putting it into practice.
“My problem is I forget what the body can really do,” she said. “I think of these extravagant ideas and I think, ‘Yeah, that can work,’ and I try it out on people, and people aren’t Play-Doh.”
Even though some of her dance moves didn’t necessarily translate well from idea to application, they still resulted in an outstanding routine, Rosemont said.
“Those challenges result in something really beautiful,” she explained. “You get to see what the body does to compensate for what it can’t do; it sometimes results in something even better.”
Arts Editor Shelly Cone often has trouble bringing ideas out of her head and putting them on paper. Contact her at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 11-18, 2010.