Students perform at regional college dance festival

In the early hours of Thursday, March 13, a geosciences van left Princeton carrying professor Diann Sichel and 10 students from the Princeton dance program, en route to Plymouth, New Hampshire.

Despite initial technical difficulties with the van and one unreliable alarm clock, we were on our way to the New England Regional American College Dance Festival held this year at Plymouth State College.

The trip, made possible by funding from the Deans of the College and Student Life and the Program in Dance, was the second time Princeton has been represented at the festival, which the department hopes to make an annual tradition.

The American College Dance Festival began in 1973. According to New England Festival coordinator, Joan Wiegers, the first festival,which included 65 works at 25 colleges, was meant to "encourage excellence in performance and choreography on the college level."

With the same purpose in mind 30 years later, the American College Dance Festival boasts an impressive 350 works and 2,000 participants from 44 states.

The New England Festival is one of eight ACDF festivals held throughout the country every year. This year's regional festival saw 350 participants representing 29 colleges from New England, California, Wisconsin, Virginia, New York and of course New Jersey.

Offering a choice of 44 classes, three adjudicated concerts, two informal concerts, a faculty concert, an installation performance and three brutally honest adjudicators, the New England festival fulfilled an ACDF twofold purpose.

This, according to Weigers, is "to provide classes, workshops and performance experiences for college dancers and an opportunity for the dancers to have their works adjudicated and critiqued by established professionals."

We arrived Thursday afternoon with enough time for the last class of the day,choosing from such varied dance styles as jazz, ballet, modern or baroque.

Following the exhilarating discovery of an endless all-you-can-eat cafeteria, our group proceeded to Hanaway Theatre to view the first adjudicated concert, which included works by students and professors from such schools as Bennington College, the University of Virginia, Montclair State University and the University of Massachusetts. Dance styles, musical choices, costumes and number of dancers varied with every piece and with every performance over the weekend.

"I was impressed and encouraged by the creativity, sophistication and diversity of the student pieces in the concerts," dancer Hana Ginsburg '04 said.

Three adjudicators, Miguel Gutierrez, Amy Marshal and Jonathan David Jackson, themselves modern dancers and choreographers, offered periodic feedback on each work.

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This year, Princeton's dancers brought two pieces for the adjudicated concerts. One large group work, "Gravitational Yearning", choreographed by Professor Sichel offered all 10 of the Princeton dancers an opportunity to perform in the second concert on Friday.

Additionally, I performed "Six Legs," my own solo, at the final adjudication concert Saturday evening.

Princeton was also represented in an informal performance by Ginsburg who performed her own choreography. All the work came out of the advanced dance performance workshop at Princeton this fall and was performed at the dance program's annual February concert at Richardson Auditorium.

While the weather in Princeton gently warmed up for spring break, we spent our weekend in chilly New Hampshire, reaping the benefits of the ACDF twofold purpose.

Princeton students took classes ranging from hip-hop and tap to Middle Eastern and West African Dance.

Dancers such as Mariah Steele '06 found the exposure to a range of dance forms allowed her to have "a better sense of how American modern dance fits into the global traditions of dance."

Praise for the diversity and value of classes was matched by the Princeton students' overwhelming enthusiasm for the opportunity to see the work of fellow college students.

"I learned so much from seeing the choreography of my peers," Melanie Velo-Simpson '04 observed.

"We are all struggling with the same choreographic problems, but the way in which people are solving these problems are so different. It made me excited to go back and work on my own choreography."

Far from the recent onslaught of midterms, JPs and theses, the festival in Plymouth proved to be an enlightening immersion into the world of the modern dancer.

As Lara Ionescu '06 commented,"it was a great change to move from chemistry labs and all-nighters to a weekend of four performances and four dance classes a day. It's hard to focus on dance at school, so this was a wonderful opportunity."

For one weekend filled with classes, rehearsals and performances, we all "got to be dancers for three days" as Prof Sichel put it. She then added,"I loved being part of and creating opportunities for everyone to enjoy."