Student Blogs
This blog post is Emily Schweich, a sophomore Broadcast Journalism major.
Vibrant costumes and perfectly coiffed hairstyles shone on the Kay Theatre stage as the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies presented Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker this October. As the actors moved effortlessly around the stage in their 1880s attire, one could hardly believe that many of them walked into the dressing room bare-faced, wearing sweatpants and some ponytails, just an hour before the show.
It’s like this pressure hour. They come in in sweatpants, with no makeup on, no pin curls, nothing. They have to completely redo their hair, do their face and put on this multi-layered, multi-piece costume.
This blog post is by Drew Barker, Graduate Student and MLS Candidate.
If you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss the beginning — however, this dance piece will demand your attention soon enough. What starts with the dinging of a bell quickly scales stairs and then ushers you outside only to look back in at a space you have never seen in such a way. Ladies in bright colors dance/run down corridors, pause, revel in a modern arabesque with arms churning, and then disappear around a corner. Visible Seams is a dance piece choreographed by MFA candidate Erin Crawley-Woods which utilizes the interior and exterior of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in ways epic and sensual.
Crawley-Woods blends an entertaining sense of humor with a swaying meditation on human relations.
This post is by Lauren Burns, a sophomore Multiplatform Journalism and History double major.
The typical dance performance does not come with a warning to wear comfortable shoes and to bring an umbrella in case of rain, but Visible Seams is not the typical dance performance. For Erin Crawley-Woods’ MFA Dance Thesis, she creates a site-specific piece, starring 15 graduate and undergraduate dancers, that incorporates the architecture of the Clarice Smith Center in its choreography. Erin explains her inspiration and vision for Visible Seams in the following Q&A interview.
I guess my inspiration was this place – not just the building but everything that goes on within it, and my interest in pursuing this project was to create a thread through all of that, through the process of making a dance.