Interchange
The NMH Dance Company Fall Concert 2023
By Crystal Zheng ‘27
Photo from NMH Flickr
As the fall season ended, the NMH Dance Company Concert was undoubtedly the best way to gather and enjoy their fantastic work. Once inside the theater, the excited energy was radiating from the audience before every show. The bar was very high from past dance shows, and high praise for the first few performances. But the dance companies did not disappoint; every performance was unique and ineffably stunning. Not to forget, the hardworking crew backstage also carefully maneuvered the lighting and music design to bring this spectacle to life.
Starting the show with a modern dance piece, … in Isolation… was a faculty choreographed dance by Junior Dance Company’s teacher Nicole Williams. It was beautifully brought to the audience by the entire JDC crew. The mellow music, in the beginning, juxtaposed the sudden and powerful change in tone near the end of the dance, when the dancers suddenly brought the audience alive with animated dance moves. It was followed by a Halloween-themed dance choreographed by Taylana Pabon ‘24; the shrieking scream near the end especially fit the theme and scared everyone in the audience. Then, the dance shifted in style, and the next couple of dances were a mixture of different hip-hop dances, with a traditional Chinese piece and another modern piece interwoven. To conclude, the last dance, Glass Ceiling, was choreographed by Gretel Schatz, the teacher of the Senior Dance Company (SDC), and was likewise performed by SDC. It started with ballet, with the background music of Ouverture by Daprinski playing, but it slowly morphed into a rhythmic modern piece that critiques the corporate workforce.
Even though the starting and ending dances were faculty pieces, all the other dances were student-made. Gretel said that she “[brings] some material and [gives] it to the students,” and then they collectively work on it. She describes the dances as a “direct extension of [the students] themselves. Whether it’s a direct representation of something they understand about themselves or an interpretation of an experience,” She relates their creative process to clay sculpting; she says, “and then we think, oh, it's going to go over here. Is that my original idea? Maybe, or maybe not. It evolves throughout the process, but the final product is always a combination of the students’ ideas, our ideas, and their peers’ ideas.”
The name of this year's dance is also unique and exciting Interchange. Gretel commented on this and said, “My take on it is like when you're dancing with other dancers, there's an interchange of ideas, energy, and movement. When you put that in front of an audience, there's an interchange of the audience presence. The act of taking in the information and the experience of watching and experiencing the dance.” Nicole added, “The dancers also are getting energy from that back and forth, hence the name Interchange.” Interchange is not only about the dancers; it’s a communal experience that draws from both sides, and this could not be experienced more vividly than in the screams and cheers from the audience, especially during the hip-hop pieces. Bonnie He, ‘27, a student choreographer and member of JDC, commented, “We tend always to perform better when the community knows how to react to the pieces. It brings the confidence we need to express our styles and dances fully. Having the audience cheer us up gives us the boost to push through tiring dances. We perform for the audience, so seeing them cheering, clapping, and screaming makes us believe we’re doing a good job.”
All of the dance performances were genuinely mesmerizing, especially with the perfect balance of modern dance, hip-hop, and all the other forms of dance. Many audience members even went consecutively for two or three shows. The energy that flowed from the dancers to the audience and then back to the dancers embodied the interchange of NMH’s community spirit.
