Department of Dance

BYU Contemporary Dance Theatre to Perform at American College Dance Festival

by Leah Hill

Dancing professionally can be an ambiguous and challenging goal for undergraduates, especially in a genre without a defined movement vocabulary or pre-choreographed steps. That’s why BYU’s Division of Contemporary Dance is giving students opportunities in choreographing and performing professional work.

“I think the only way I will ever learn to go out and into the world and have a dance studio someday and choreograph dances is to [learn to choreograph] while I am at school,” said Catherine Taggert, a dance major who choreographed Life’s a Bench for Contemporary Dance Theatre and Dance Ensemble. “Truly, it just comes down to the fact that the dance department feels it is important for students to have experiences in the creative process.”

BYU Contemporary Dance Theatre was recently chosen to perform two dances, including Taggert’s choreographed piece, in the professionally adjudicated performance for the American College Dance Festival.

[The ACDF] is a really important organization,” said Pat Debenham, artistic director of BYU’s Contemporary Dance Theatre. “It’s about preparing students to perform, choreograph and share their work to other schools.”

ACDF— the only organization in the nation that hosts adjudicated college performances— chose nine pieces out of the forty dances performed by colleges at the festival for the adjudicated performance.

Taggert, a Dance Ensemble member, choreographed Life’s a Bench as a way to contrast how many serious or deep Contemporary dances are usually performed, reminding dancers not to take themselves too seriously.

“I wanted to bring more lightheartedness to the concert,” Taggert said. “It’s very lively and very energetic. The benches are moved around throughout the piece and [the dancers] weave in and out of them and they lift them up and they hang upside down on them.”

Contemporary Dance Theatre also performed the professional piece Moving Target by Carley Condor in collaboration with BYU cinematographer Karen Jensen at the festival.

Jensen’s visual backdrop projects different vantage points of the dancers on stage during the performance.

“[The backdrop] in some ways helped to direct the audience,” Debenham said. “I think it is a very visually dynamic work.”

Moving Target, a physically demanding dance, represents the strength and multi-tasking ability of women claiming their place in the world.

“Every piece is a world unto itself,” Debenham said. “And I think that’s one of the things that’s exciting about having guests come in is it requires the students to learn to be flexible. They have got to figure that out what’s important stylistically to this choreographer.”

The adjudicators told the dancers they were fierce in Moving Target and lively in Life’s a Bench.

Debenham said the students’ light shined through while they were dancing and the adjudicators recognized it. “It’s because our students know who they are and understand their place in the world,” he said.

The Contemporary Dance Theatre group learned Moving Target and a professional piece called Prey for its “NOW” Contemporary Dance in Theatre concert in January 2011.

Internationally acclaimed, four-time Besse awardee choreographer Bebe Miller taught the dancers her choreography for Prey and instructed some of their classes.

“Miller, who is brilliant, came and set [Prey] on us with this image of what it would be about,” said Brandon Roach, a senior dance major. “Then we would throw ourselves into it and perform it with all we had and at the end it touched people.”

Prey is a physical and spiritual landscape of movement.

Roach said it has been a rewarding experience working with multiple choreographers and viewpoints, especially with Miller’s piece. “It is about spirituality or who you are as a being in the universe or what your soul is or what your purpose is in life,” Roach said.

Debenham said these experiences are preparing dancers for professional work. “You’re involved in a rehearsal process where you have to create as well as replicate a choreographer’s intent and steps,” Debenham said. “So it’s really an intense training period for them as they prepare for professional work in companies.”