Each year, the Emory Dance Company's spring concert showcases new work from the University's emerging choreographers. This season's concert, "Sum of its Parts," set for April 26-28 in the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, includes pieces from five undergraduate students.
Juxtaposing individuals against the community, challenging the preconceptions surrounding beauty and balancing pedestrian gestures with technique, "Sum of its Parts" presents an evening of inquisitive new work.
• Senior Alice Chen finds inspiration in discovering beauty in the surprising and grotesque. Using untraditional applications of movement technique, Chen aims to "demonstrate the idea that way to not be classically beautiful is in fact aesthetically pleasing." Her work revolves around the interworking of a quintet; varying group work against solos, duets and trios.
• In her piece, senior Hannah Frankel infuses compact, task-based gesture with "wild, raw movement." By layering driving, direct motion and light-hearted choreography on the dancer's seven different bodies, Frankel celebrates the dancer as both a choreographic collaborator and expressive mover.
• Lauren Kaplan's piece explores the concepts of outsiders and alliances, observing behavior of the individual, the group, and the outcast. The junior combines fluid movement with aggressive internal focus to evoke the experience of singularity among many.
• Julio Medina, also a junior, crafts a piece that investigates "the rise and fall of members within the community," leaving utopia to "take a dip into a darker realm of anger, fright and ferocity" with a movement style that reflects the undercurrents of power and chaos within a society.
• Senior Megan Sypher says she is "fascinated by the relationship between movement, music and time" and manipulates these elements to explore the effects of interpersonal relationships on identity. In her piece, the movements transform as dancers travel in and out of groups, moving from community to singularity.
"Sum of its Parts" will be at 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 26 and Friday, April 27 and at 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 28 in the Schwartz Center's Dance Studio. Tickets are $10 general admission, $8 for discount category members; $5 for students. For more information, contact the Arts at Emory box office www.arts.emory.edu at 404-727-5050.