Southeast Missouri State University student publication

Fall for Dance concert offers different show every year

Monday, November 9, 2015

Riley James has been involved in Fall for Dance since her first semester as a freshman. She was on crew that year, and every semester following, she has been casted to perform.

She always had an interest in choreography but never took the leap to actually do it. With graduation on the horizon, this time around, she is.

"I kind of used my busy schedule as an excuse, like, 'I don't have time to choreograph,'" James said. "This semester I finally was like, 'No I'm going to do it. It doesn't matter if I don't have time or not.' I never thought I would, and I honestly wasn't expecting [it]. I feel very honored and privileged to be able to present my piece in the concert, because that wasn't my goal, I was just like, 'I'm just going to do this. I'm going to take the step and do it and just try it.'"

James found her idea at an American College Dance Association, also known as ACDA, conference and showcased it in the spring during Last Chance to Dance.

"I just took that idea, put it in a Last Chance piece because I had never really choreographed before, and I didn't know how it would end up," James said. "So this fall, when I decided to choreograph for the concert, I just pulled from that and I pulled combinations."

Her piece comprises six dancers in a contemporary style. The ensemble isn't necessarily supposed to sync movement, but James said dancers often still connect across the stage to provide structure to the choreography. Although, the title "Apperception" demands somewhat of an individual study.

"It's, 'The mental process by which a person makes sense of an idea by assimilating it to the body of ideas he or she already possesses,'" James said. "... It's really what I want them to feel, is making sense of something because of a memory they had because of something they already have within them."

She wants to show that, yes, memories are past reminiscences, but they can continue to be used to motivate the present.

"I really just tell them every time that we go to do the piece, 'Think about your memory, think about your environment, think about what you're doing and what's motivating you, think about who you're connected to within the dance and how that connects you through the dance,'" James said.

Yet James has her heart in both being a choreographer and performer. She's also a part of Southeast Missouri State University dance professor Hilary Peterson's quartet, "On Bended Knee." The challenge isn't so much in technique, each requires an understanding of modern dance, but rather turning off one mindset and turning on the other.

"In Hilary's piece I have to forget about what's going on outside of it and really zone into my own environment in the piece and the dancers that I'm dancing with there and be present there, instead of let my mind wonder," James said.

Peterson's composition will be performed to a choral piece. The music is classified as an adagio, or a direction for slow tempo, which calls for poise and balance. With so small an ensemble as well, Peterson said she looked for strength in dancers. They have to be able to draw an audience in with not only their focus, but also their energy.

"The work itself, I think, in a way, it'll challenge our audiences, because I think that the choral music isn't something that's heard very often, and again, it has a sort of slow pace to it," Peterson said. "So in order to grab the audience members, I knew that I would need dancers who could really perform and sort of sell the choreography."

She needs performers to work well together, but a quartet also leaves room to showcase talent dancer to dancer. Peterson added that upwards of eight dancers, more or less, becomes about "traffic control."

"With four dancers, you can really focus on who they are individually and give them material and movement that fits them more and highlight their strengths," Peterson said. "It becomes much more about them and the piece and what they're trying to communicate versus what I want to communicate."

As James predicted with a hectic schedule, the transition between the two roles took some getting used to.

"When I go to my rehearsals I have to switch and remember what it's like to be a dancer and be the one dancing a piece, but also looking for things outside of that, looking at the big picture, looking at it as a whole instead of as an individual person," James said. "Wherein Hilary's case, I kind of get to focus on myself, connecting to others, but 'What am I really doing? How can I enhance my dancing?' and then when I'm choreographing and being the choreographer in a rehearsal I have to think of the big picture."

But James said observing from the two different sides has expanded her understanding of the relationship between director and who's on stage.

"It's been cool in rehearsal to be on both ends of it, to see what it's like when you get corrections and applying those and how many corrections Hilary gives us at a time and knowing the capacity in that way as a dancer and then remembering that when I'm the choreographer and I'm the one giving corrections or direction or whatever that may be," James said.

Like Peterson, she gets to witness firsthand the application of classroom learning done at a team level.

"Just seeing it really come together, that's been really cool, enhancing what I gave them and I didn't know it could become that kind of thing," James said.

The title for Fall for Dance doesn't change. It may be an annual concert, but a new season inspires fresh ideas.

"I think the content always changes and grows, and as the dancers in front of us change and as our goals for the program change, we are always fine tuning and trying new and different things," Peterson said. "So I think that's the most exciting thing for me, is that every fall I really get to reevaluate what I want to do and what I want to say to the audience members and who I get to work with, and that continues to be really exciting and challenging."

Fall for Dance will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 19-21 and at 2 p.m. Nov. 22 in the Donald C. Bedell Performance Hall. General admission tickets cost $18 and $3 for students with a valid Southeast ID. Tickets can be purchased at the River Campus Box Office, by calling (573) 651-2265 or online at RiverCampusEvents.com.

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