Student dancers will take the stage at the Sheldon Museum of Art tonight. The event marks the premiere showing for University of Nebraska-Lincoln dance program at the museum.
Susan Levine, an assistant professor of dance at UNL and director of the show, said the concert’s title, “Wish You Were Here,” refers to missing personnel.
“It’s a very informal show,” Levine said. “Five dances, for some reason or another, are missing something. Three of the dances are missing one or more dancers or live musicians they usually perform with.”
In addition to absent dancers and musicians, the “works in progress” have been retooled to accommodate missing themes to create whole pieces.
After the showing, the audience is invited to stay in the theater for a casual conversation with the choreographers and performers.
Levine choreographed two of the dances, and students composed the other three. Alexandra Bane, a junior dance major, choreographed her own dance, “OutFreach.”
Bane and other students crafted their works for a composition class. She said that in composing the dances, the students prepared “a phrase of how we like to move.”
While she choreographed her dance right before class, she said others take more time with the process.
“I improv a lot to create my movement,” Bane said. “Putting everything together at the last minute helps push myself. I emphasize improv in my movement.”
“I’ve been dancing since I was really little,” she said. “I started studying modern dance when I was a freshman in high school.”
“One of the things about modern dance that kind of sets it apart from other art forms (is) there’s a lot of process involved with the work,” Levine said.
The “choreographer and dancer work intimately” so much that it blurs the lines of who created what, she said.
“The dance program here is modern,” Bane said, but she still studies both ballet and modern dance.
“Some say modern dance is the rebellion of ballet,” she said. “It’s hard to say what it is or isn’t because it means something different to everyone.”
The event begins at 7:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
tomhelberg@dailynebraskan.com
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