Seven student choreographed works were showcased in the Department of Theatre Arts’ “Spring into Dance” concert.

It is the first dance concert at CMU that has exclusively featured student-created work. Students began by pitching a concept in December and started casting and working on their dance in February. According to assistant professor of dance and show director Jennifer Glaw, the students were on a tight timeline to create their pieces because staging began in early April.

“Making a dance […] it’s an involved process of being able to work with a cast and collaborate and communicate your ideas,” said Glaws. “None of the choreographers started with a script. So it’s different than perhaps other performing arts where you might have a script or a score that you go off of. These were ideas and a blank studio space, and perhaps, dancers and performers in the space to help collaborate and develop those ideas.”

Leading up to the concert, each of the choreographers went through an adjudication process with their pieces, receiving feedback every few weeks to further develop them and consider different perspectives. The show opened with senior dance major Mallory Christopher’s piece “Visible Quarks”.

Christopher’s work featured dancers tangled together with red cord. Christopher said she was interested in exploring the visible and invisible forces that influence life. Dancers knotted together and became untangled seamlessly, as they worked around the rope. The cord added another dimension to the piece, and allowed some forces guiding life to become visible on stage.

“Changing Pathways”, choreographed by sophomore dance major Natalie Griffith, was a contemporary ballet piece. Ballet holds a special place in Griffith’s heart and who said she wanted to use the style to explore pathways in space and how directional facing influences the story.

“It’s kind of about how much of your pathway is predetermined by destiny and how much of it is determined by the chances you’ve taken in life,” said Griffith.

Junior Doran Kelsey said he tried to convey how real life experiences translate into movement. His piece “Catalyst” explores how movement expresses the soul and mind.

“I’m mainly a conceptual artist, so being able to learn how to navigate around that, it was very challenging, but I think I did my job,” said Kelsey.

Kelsey’s piece was emotionally driven and used dramatic lighting to highlight the emotional depth.

In the last piece of the first act, Maren Johnson said she explored living with anxiety and the thoughts and feelings that go with it in her piece “Introspection”.

“I’m exploring the before and the after, the during, and basically how we deal with that and how we learn to cope through those different stages,” said Johnson.

Her choreography featured many moments where dancers were caught in a repetitive motion that they couldn’t escape.

“It’s just like this loop that you can’t get out of. It’s just start and repeat, start and repeat, and they just keep going,” said Johnson.

Senior Lauren Gram’s solo piece “Loyalties” opened the second act. Gram said she drew on Bartenieff fundamentals and Laban movement analysis, both theories used to describe and categorize movement.

Gram was also inspired by dancer Peggy Hackney, who also works with Laban and Bartenieff concepts.

“[Peggy Hackney] talks about the concept of yield and push, so it’s all about that polarity of you have to push to go somewhere else, which is a weird concept, but it led me to a beautiful place,” said Gram.

Senior Corinne Nelson said she explored how individuals move in systems and relationships in her piece “The In Between”.

“This exploration first started because of my fascination with the way components in a machine or cells in a body rely on each other, and that became a metaphor for human relationships,” said Nelson.

Nelson used spatial relationships, physical touch and breath to explore connection. Her dancers build off of each other and many movements were created by a reaction to another movement.

“I was really interested in how even simple exchanges of energy between bodies could show unity or conflict,” said Nelson.

The finale featured sophomore Molly Mitchell’s choreography “Hot Mess” performed to “Hot to Go” by Chappell Roan. Mitchell said she used this crowd-pleaser song to explore comedy.

“I just really wanted to bring some comedy into the concert dance world because it’s not something you see so much, but it is something that really, really interests me as a choreographer,” said Mitchell.

Mitchell’s piece opened with a skit about dancers coming in to warm up for class. Dancers personified characters, trying to out-do each other, remember choreography, and order takeout.

In the piece, Mitchell continued to include comedic elements and break the fourth wall. The audience was in stitches when a delivery person walked through the high-kicking dancers, trying to figure out who ordered orange chicken.

Glaws said that while all of the pieces were unique, a common theme throughout all of them was the use of structure and architecture.

The dance department will return with the showcase fundraiser “Emerge” on May 9 in Moss Performing Arts Center Studio 304.