'Read my Hips': A profile of dancer Catherine Stoia '00

Like most Princeton students, Catherine Stoia '00 has been leading a double life for the last several years, and one half of it is about to reach fruition this weekend in Hagan Dance Studio at 185 Nassau. Yes, another artist pops out of the woodwork, or in this case, the chemical engineering laboratories. This weekend, Stoia presents her dance thesis, "Read My Hips," a composition in five parts based on the charms and challenges of individual physicality.

If "Read My Hips" sounds like the title of a BodyHype piece, it might be because Stoia has danced with the group since her freshman year. But more likely the title comes out of the very personal wit, silliness and even sexiness that Stoia always incorporates into her work.

The title is also serious, and quite literal. "Personally, I'm really fascinated with pedestrian movement, and the way that everybody has their own physicality, which really is inseparable from their personality," Stoia said. "I think that's really interesting and individual."

This is a theme which she has explored through dance before. Some readers may be familiar with "Loveseat," one of her BodyHype pieces last spring, in which four dancers played awkward romantic games on and off a couch. Others may have seen "Hello, my name is" in the dance department's Spring Dance Festival. In that piece, five dancers tell the stories of the scars on their bodies through speech and movement.

The term "pedestrian movement" is used by modern dancers to refer to everyday gestures and physicality, movements that are distinguished from "technical" dance movement by the fact that, in theory, anyone can and does perform them. Such everyday movement is easily identifiable in Stoia's work, and this is often what makes her pieces so appealing. A shrug, a smile, a skip or a slap build easily into more elaborate, abstract dance phrases that still somehow keep the audience involved.

Stoia herself performs with a spontaneity that often mimics the expressiveness of speech, driving through fast, syncopated movement and then suddenly hesitating to toss a head or a hand. The fact that her pieces are based on pedestrian movement, however, does not mean they are not challenging to the most experienced dancer.

While she plays down her technical abilities, Stoia has had serious training in many dance forms at some point in her life. She began at age three, learning ballet, tap, jazz and baton, the last of which was somewhat of a disaster, she said, ironically insisting that she does not have the motor skills for that sort of thing. Even more of an unmitigated disaster was gymnastics, and Stoia smilingly cites the psychological scars that prevent her to this day from performing a cartwheel.

After moving to Chicago at age 10, her training was not so rigorous, and she quit dance entirely by her freshman year. She did continue to perform and choreograph with her high school's pom-pom squad, however. Though she began modern dance in high school, Stoia said the technique didn't really feel good on her body until college, at which point she embraced it.

One of the results of this combination of training is the high-speed "aerobic hip-hop" style of pieces that Stoia has choreographed for BodyHype, which can be so intensely challenging to a dancer. Another is the more thematically-driven modern dance works like her thesis.

This semester Stoia has taken a break from BodyHype and concentrated solely on modern dance and her thesis. "I feel like it's a culmination of things that I've felt in the past four years, you know, things that I've realized about myself," Stoia said. "And I think it's definitely, in terms of the movement vocabulary, kind of a style that I've created in the past four years."

Stoia struggled a little in trying to find the words to describe this unique style: "Well, it's not classical vocabulary . . . It's coordination, rhythm, it's very, I don't want to say theatrical, but very caricatured, at times. I like doing things that are somehow humorous or at least have some sort of an outlet . . . And it's so funny, because they usually don't start out that way."

The issues she addresses in her thesis and much of her other work — such as the ridiculous mannerisms of a first date — certainly have both serious and humorous resonance for most people. The first section of her thesis, performed by all six cast members, including Stoia, is based on studies the dancers did of each other's mannerisms, speech styles and movement styles.

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The second section, performed by five dancers, is built on the physicality of mood swings, and the third is a much more abstract solo for Stoia. The fourth section is a trio is about the intense frustration of making mistakes, the realization that mistakes are okay and "the go physicality," as Stoia calls it, that such mistakes produce. The fifth section is "Hello, my name is," which is a lighthearted crowd-pleaser, but which was inspired, Stoia said, by "my angst . . . and my disappointment that I have all these marks on my body."

Stoia's independent work in dance is, of course, separate from her independent work in chemical engineering, which involves the development of a new spermicide to replace Nonoxynol-9. Between academics and art, her schedule is always busy, but Stoia says she has never felt torn intellectually because she has always loved both aspects of her life. Even during the year she took off from school between her sophomore and junior years, she managed to do both.

Stoia spent her time off travelling in Croatia alone for three months — she recommends that all young women try traveling solo at some point — working in a lab at Northwestern and performing in the modern dance concert at Princeton in the spring. "Its actually really humorous to be in both [areas] and see each realm's preconceptions of the other," she said. "They're absurd."

Stoia has had offers for next year from graduate schools in both dance and chemical engineering programs, though it looks like she may opt for engineering — if for no other reason than that it can offer money and dance programs cannot. Creative fulfillment is important, but practicality often wins out in the end.

Whatever her long-term decisions, Stoia's years of work and level of achievement in the dance department are a credit to the artistic vision that seems to percolate so often in 185 Nassau, outside the mainstream of the University. One hopes that she can continue to offer the same kind of energy and human insight that she has given to her choreography here to whatever she chooses to pursue in the future.

The Program in Theater and Dance presents "Read My Hips," choreographed by Cathie Stoia '00. Fri. March 31 and Sat. April 1 at 8 p.m. inThe Hagan Dance Studio, 185 Nassau Street.