Features Reporter
Photo by: Clinton “Buddy” Brown
Modern dance can mean just about anything. This was the idea embodied by Justin Keats and CMU dance students at Friday and Saturday’s Spring Into Dance performances.
The Theatre Department’s annual Spring Into Dance repertory featured almost 50 dance majors as well as a handful of guest dancers and choreographers.
Keats, a dancer and choreographer who has traveled the world and most recently danced for White Wave and NatalieInMotion in New York, has spent the spring semester as CMU Theatre Department’s first ever artist-in-residence.
“Usually, the guest artist comes in one week before the concert,” Keats said. “It’s just been an awesome opportunity.”
The audience laughed at Keats’ initial introduction to modern dance as he strutted, tumbled and glided across the stage, arching his body awkwardly or shaking his booty one moment, then gracefully pirouetting the next, humorously demonstrating professional and public perception of the multi-faceted genre.
“It’s really very eclectic, there’s literally something for everyone,” Director Tracey Bonner said.
Joining Keats the week before the Spring Into Dance performances were guest choreographers Natalie Deryn Johnson of NatalieInMotion and Andrew Pearson of the Nuevo School of Contemporary Dance, the Los Angeles Arts Collective and the Orange County High School of the Arts in California.
The performance featured 12 pieces, some choreographed by Keats, Johnson and Pearson, and others compiled by CMU faculty and dance students.
“It’s a great opportunity for our students to perform, to get to do some choreographic work and present the material as well as the techniques they’ve been working on all year,” Bonner said. “To be able to show that off, then have a pre-professional opportunity to get to do something on stage so that hopefully they can move on to get a professional career.”
Seniors Sarah Bullock and Rachel Krueger provided their own choreography for two pieces featured in the performance, “The Instantaneous Pursuit” and “Etude for Friends,” respectively.
As the Theatre Department’s first resident artist, Keats spent the spring semester working with dance students, readying them and himself for Spring Into Dance. The guest choreographer and dancer compiled three pieces for the performance and danced in just as many.
“I’ve never done anything like this before, and I don’t think they (CMU’s Theatre Department) have either,” Keats said. “So it was like all of us learning together.”
The challenge provided to CMU dancers by Keats and the other guest choreographers must have paid off, as the majority of Robinson Theatre’s 600 seats were occupied Friday and Saturday nights as well as Saturday afternoon.
“It went solidly, and I felt so happy just watching it come together,” Keats said. “[Dance] is not just hitting the positions but actually living within those positions and growing, finding freedom within the movement.”
cblackme@mavs.coloradomesa.edu
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