Redeemed, the Spring Berry College Dance Company Concert

From April 22nd through the 25th, the spring Dance Company concert, Redeemed, will be streaming for audiences. At just $5 a ticket, the concert will be open for audience members for these three days.

Similar to the fall Dance Company concert, this one is also a streamed concert, where the entire concert was filmed before-hand by the student and faculty choreographers. Dancers danced in masks and adhered to social distancing guidelines.

While, different, this concert still shared the same hard work and dedication from student dancers that all concerts in the past have seen. Work for the concert begins already at the beginning of the semester in January, where students audition for the variety of dances in the concert. If they are accepted for a dance, they will then spend the rest of the semester in rehearsals preparing for the concert. During the week of tech week, the week where all the technical elements of the show come together, dancers gather in the theatre space and work on preparing the dances to be filmed by the end of the week.

This year there were 6 student choreographers and 1 faculty choreographer that made up the entire show. Junior Elena Baker had the privilege of choreographing not only for this spring’s show, but also for last year’s show.

For this show, Elena choreographed a dance called Jouissance, the French word for joy. It features 6 dancers that follow the theme of joy, and how the people around you bring happiness to your life. The dance is upbeat and jubilant, and Elena hopes she can convey the joy has felt to the audience through her choreography.

Elena had the opportunity to choreograph for the Dance Company Spring Concert of 2020, before it was cancelled. This process of choreographing has been a lot different, as Elena explained.

“There’s been a lot more ‘I have a vision in my head,’ and then you have a lot more barriers between where you see something starting and where it actually ends because of COVID,” Elena said.

COVID-19 guidelines that both dancers and choreographers follow in order to keep every dancer safe, state that a dancer must wear a mask and remain about 6 feet from each other. Because of this, Elena knew she had to be a little bit more creative with her choreography in order to explain the emotions and story she wanted to tell to the audience.

Although there have been a lot of restrictions due to COVID-19, Elena believes that she still feels such a sense of collaboration with her dancers and the audience.

“Even though it is my choreography, they are the ones dancing it, so they have a part of creating and portraying, especially to the audience, and getting the intent across,” Baker said. “So including them in the process has been incredibly rewarding.”

Sophomore Sara Blakely is choreographing her first Dance Company concert. She joined the company her freshman year with the fall concert, and was excited to finally be able to choreograph her own piece. She explained that she has been dreaming of her piece since high school, and she was so thankful to have the opportunity to craft it and present it for the company.

“I’m excited to get to see everyone, be in the dressing rooms, and rehearsals like this are just always fun,” Sara said.

The hardest part of this process, as Sara explained, was trying to choreograph under the restrictions of COVID-19 guidelines. But being in the theatre for tech week has been the most rewarding for her. It's the second time since COVID-19 began that the dancers have been able to get together in the theatre and rehearse as if it was pre-pandemic times.

Despite the show being filmed, Sara is excited for a whole new opportunity of viewing the concert. For the first time ever, she can watch all her hard work, and the hard work of her dancers with her family.

Professor Sara Pecina, director of the dance program and visiting professor of dance, has been working with the dancers all semester to craft a concert that was not only to showcase the talents of the dancers, but also be engaging for the audience.

Sara choreographed two pieces for the concert, a pointe piece and a tap piece. Each is very unique and covers different ideas and topics. Her pointe piece is loosely based on the process of grief, and what it looks like when it feels like someone’s personal life has completely halted but the rest of the world keeps spinning. Her tap piece is an upbeat, happy movement piece that is visually engaging and full of energy. After watching these two pieces and the entire concert in general, Sara hopes the audience understands the diversity of the program and of the dancers. Each of these dancers are so unique, and Sara believes that this concert highlights the beauty of the arraignment of skills that each dancer has, going from tap to pointe, to contemporary.

The hardest part of any concert is getting settled into a new space and practicing on a real stage with all technical elements. But with a virtual concert, this becomes even harder as Sara explained. Virtual concerts include lots of technology, which as Sara states, is incredible, yet incredibly hard. It is not only amazing being able to create a concert during a pandemic, but it also allows anyone to view the concert from the comfort of their home. With the purchase of their ticket, the audience member has the viewing of the concert for the three days that the show is open. Thus, making the concert accessible to all the family and friends of dancers, who might not typically be able to drive out to Berry to see the show.

One of the hardest hurdles that Sara has to worry about is keeping the audience engaged and interacting with the virtual concert. With live shows, audience members are actively participating by deciding to come to the show and give applause. But with virtual concerts, Sara explained the difficulty that she has faced with the Dance Company in getting audience members excited and interacting with the concert. She believes that connecting more with the audience through social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook has helped to connect with the audience.

Looking toward next year, Sara hopes the Dance Company will be able to safely hold concerts in person. Without a live audience, the dancers and the audience miss the most important part of being involved in like theatre: the action and reaction of the dancers and the audience.

“That’s the whole point of live theatre, that you have the shared energy of being in a space together, that you really can’t replicate no matter what you do,” Sara said. “So I miss that for the dancers mostly, because having been on that side, I know what it’s like. But they are doing very well despite that.”

The concert streams until through 25thand only costs $5. Check out the amazing work that the Dance Company has worked on and produced this semester!