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Davidson College Dance Ensemble

Dance Ensemble
featured in Spring 2006 issue of "Woodrow"
by Lauren Yero

Disclaimer: When I start talking about dance, it’s hard for me to feign disinterest. I could pretend that it isn’t one of the few things in the world that makes my head and chest flood with endorphins, but that would be an out and out lie. And so as you read this article, be careful not to be too immediately persuaded to kick off your sneakers and slip into a pair of pretty pink ballet shoes—make sure you stretch a bit first.

Dance Ensemble was not always the phenomenon it is today, consistently selling out Duke Family Performance Hall two nights each semester and claiming one tenth of the student body as active participants. Currently, Dance Ensemble operates not only as one of the largest student-run groups on campus, but also as an organization which requires just two things of its participants: interest and enthusiasm. There are few organizations on Davidson’s—or any other college’s campus for that matter that can boast such inclusivity and still mean something to participate in it, and yet Dance Ensemble has somehow achieved this happy medium. You become a part of Dance Ensemble the moment you sign your name on a sheet of paper at the first meeting in September or January and by the end of the semester, performing in front of a screaming two-thirds of the student body, you’ll probably call yourself a dancer.
However, Dance Ensemble has not always enjoyed such widespread popularity. Paula Kurani started the organization in 1985 as a 10-15 student modern dance troupe. The majority of the students involved were dancers trained classically in ballet, modern and jazz dance, and they held several small performances throughout the year. However by 1994, the group, spearheaded by student dancers Carrie Van Deest and Erin Steffensmeier, had dwindled to barely eight dancers. These two dancers decided to host performances entitled “Neglected Arts.” With only eight dancers, however, the group could not host a show of their own, so they recruited various subterranean talents from across the student body—self-taught musicians, poets, jugglers—to join in a semesterly showcase of various forms of neglected performance art. The performances started off small. As College Archivist and active Dance Ensemble participant Jan Blodgett recalls, she could easily bring Rice Crispy Treats for the whole cast the night of the show.

The eight-or-so men and women involved in the dance troupe at this point were almost exclusively dancers with previous training. This all changed, however, when a girl named Julia Philpot got involved. She began choreographing dances that anyone could participate in, regardless of previous experience. Under Julia, these “Neglected Arts” performances became increasingly popular. “She had people that had never danced before doing dolphin rolls all over the floor,” Jan says, and students became more and more excited to see their friends performing on stage. Students would sit in the aisles and stand in the back of Hodson Hall to see a sold-out show.
From this point on, dance at Davidson began to embody something very unique, and the student body began to rally around it with an unexpected excitement. Eventually the organization grew too big to be housed in Hodson and started selling tickets to shows in Duke, which quickly filled the house as well. And now, once again Dance Ensemble as an organization is beginning to change shape.
Within Dance Ensemble there has been a growing anxiety about what to do with students who have danced all their lives. These students are accustomed to taking five dance classes per week in addition to Saturday rehearsal, who know what it is to fawn over and idolize their choreographers because of the art they are able to transfer from their minds to the bodies of their dancers, and who at Davidson have no equivalent available to them. These are the dancers who take every opportunity that Dance Ensemble provides them to dance—participating in up to nine dances per semester in addition to choreographing pieces of their own while also taking advantage of whatever extra-curricular dance classes are offered each semester—yet still feel frustrated because there very little way for them to be challenged or to greatly improve as dancers. These dancers, over the past few years have worked hard to bring instructors from North Carolina Dance Theatre, a Charlotte-based dance company, to Davidson to teach master classes several times per semester, and eventually have worked to increase the frequency to several classes per week. This past year, Dance Ensemble even sprouted a separate group—a selective dance company called The Gamut—in attempt to provide a challenging and exciting dance environment for those dancers who have brought with them to Davidson a significant amount of dance experience.
There is no easy solution to this problem. The most distinctive thing about Dance Ensemble is its mission to include both highly experienced and completely inexperienced dancers in the same show. However, the desire from both the dancers involved and the students in the audience for more dance-related opportunities has recently become far more prominent. Piper Ferriter (’07), who wrote a column on the modern dance company at her high school, comments that she thinks “modern dance is an enormously important art…It is a supremely subjective discourse where the audience eavesdrops on a monologue of movement. Modern dance lends an opportunity to express oneself with oneself; a physical soliloquy,” but that she wishes sometimes that Dance Ensemble would take dance more seriously so that it could become a venue for this kind of art.

One freshman currently active in both Dance Ensemble and The Gamut attended dance tryouts last weekend at UNC-Greensboro, a school with one of the top dance programs in the state. Even though she applied to Davidson through Early Decision and thinks of it as the ideal school for her academically and socially, the disconnect that she feels between the dance opportunities that were available to her in high school and those available at Davidson has caused her to seriously consider transferring colleges. “I knew when I decided to come here that I would sort of be giving up dance,” she says, “but I thought that would be OK. It’s not.” Having danced since she was three-years-old and having been involved in a pre-professional dance company all throughout high school, her frustrations are not unfounded. When asked what it is about dance that makes it such an essential part of her life, she says that she’s not exactly sure how to articulate it. She describes her high school dance classes as some of the most physically challenging experiences of her life. “But they’re always worth it,” she says, “I always come out of them wanting to do more…it’s one of the only ways I know that I can make something beautiful.” She recently received word that she was accepted to the dance program at UNC-G. She remains undecided about what she will do next year, but remarks that at Davidson, “dancers have to make a choice when they come to give up what they love. And that isn’t fair.”
There is no easy solution to this problem. The most distinctive thing about Dance Ensemble is its mission to include both highly experienced and completely inexperienced dancers in the same show. However, the desire from both the dancers involved and the students in the audience for more dance-related opportunities has recently become far more prominent.
With a performance lasting just over two hours this semester including twenty-six pieces, with one dance studio to accommodate over one-hundred dancers per week, it is clear that Dance Ensemble is bursting at the seams, enjoying a period where interest and demand are no longer the issue but are instead part of the dilemma: how do you manage such an overwhelming amount of enthusiasm? The student leaders involved are working as hard as ever to satisfy the needs of this burgeoning organization. As Carrie Harris wrote in her speech before the 1996 Dance Troupe Spring Performance, “this speech tonight is not to invoke pity…by creating a list of complaints about what it is that we do. Rather, it is to acknowledge the amazing leadership and dedication of the dance troupe’s directors and to show appreciation for their time and talent.” Like the dance troupe of 1996, today’s Dance Ensemble is on the verge of a major change, and it truly is an exciting time for dance at Davidson.