Seniors in the Spotlight Dance Majors Showcase Their Moves

By Grace Gardiner ‘15

Published March 2015

Right, clockwise from top right: Sara Reed '15, Amy Gerteisen '17, 
Raven Carrington ‘17, Amanda Fischer '15 & Lindsay Brents ‘16. 

Besides choreographing their own pieces for the Spring Dance Concert, seniors Sara Reed and Amanda Fischer are dancing in six and ten out of the eleven total pieces in the concert, respectively. Left, clockwise: Fischer (standing), Reed (sitting), and Amy Gerteisen ‘17. Right, clockwise from top right: Reed, Gerteisen, Raven Carrington ‘17, Fischer, & Lindsay Brents ‘16.

The Randolph College Spring Dance Concert—to take place on April 9-11 in Smith Hall Theatre at 8 p.m., $4 for students with a PawPass I.D. and $8 for general admission—has served as an opportunity for senior dance majors to showcase the extent of their development and growth as artists through the exhibition of their senior pieces. The 2015 concert features the work of Sara Reed and Amanda Fischer, two driven and determined majors, each choreographing long, comprehensive pieces with large casts.

Reed’s piece, with a length just under eight minutes and a cast of seven dancers, is an unflinching exploration of the loss of a mother through a daughter’s perspective. Reed has wanted to pursue the emotional concerns of her piece, the different iterations of grief in a person’s reaction to loss, for sometime, ever since her grandmother flatlined and then came back in the cardiac ICU two years ago. “I thought of my mother, who had come so close to losing her own mother, and wanted to explore what she was feeling, to put into movement all of the things that she couldn’t verbally express.” The piece is divided into four sections. Each section illustrates a progression of the daughter’s journey through grief, from the literal loss of her mother in the first section, to the last section in which the daughter begins to accept help and support from the people around her. “My intention is to explore how crazy grief really is: in a way, it unites us, but everyone walks through it differently,” Reed said.

Amanda Fischer’s piece differs from Reed’s in that it doesn’t have a strict narrative arc or aim to tell a story. “In the past, I’ve found narrative to be a crutch for myself. It restricts my creative vision,” Fischer said. Instead, her piece focuses on “the concept of weaving,” how the movement themes mirror the layering of the music to which the piece is choreographed. Fischer chose a composition by Philip Glass, a minimalist composer, for its musical repetitions and motifs. The 9-and-a-half minute piece by Glass has given her plenty of space to create her own motifs in movement for her five dancers. She commented further, “I’m interested in the musicality of movement, how I can explore a theme through music and dance working as two cohesive pieces to the performance.”

Besides choreographing their own pieces for the
 Spring Dance Concert, seniors Sara Reed and
 Amanda Fischer are dancing in six and ten out 
of the eleven total pieces in the concert, respectively. 
Left, clockwise: Fischer (standing), Reed (sitting), and Amy Gerteisen ‘17.

Both Reed and Fischer commented on the intense preparation they’ve undertaken in preparing their pieces for the concert. Because of their large casts, scheduling rehearsals has been a tricky obstacle. Moreover, Reed said that “it’s a tough thing to know when to let your work go, to let it stand on its own. It’s hard to know when you’ve reached the natural stopping point, when you need to leave your work alone so it can speak for itself.”

Fischer added that the fact that their pieces “have to stand next to those of professionals is intimidating.” The concert will feature eleven pieces in total, eight of which have been choreographed by different artists who participate in the department’s Helen McGehee Visiting Artist Program in Dance and one choreographed by Kelly Dudley of the department’s part-time faculty. Nonetheless, the two seniors’ pieces seem like they will hold their own just fine.

Nektaria Baker ’15, a dancer in Reed’s piece, commented that “she is in love with Sara’s dance brain. There’s something about Sara’s choreography that, as a dancer, feels so right in the body. There will be moments of vulnerability that are so supple and tender, then in a second she’ll rip it all away from you with something so completely raw it drains you, but in the best possible way!”

And Reed said of Fischer’s piece, “I have really enjoyed being in Amanda’s piece, not only for the artistry but also the process. Amanda has been very honest about the hours of behind-the-scene work and thought that went—and continues to go—into the creation of the piece. I am very excited and honored to be representing Amanda’s work.  She has done a phenomenal job of combining a variety of movement to create an overarching theme.”