IU’s upperclassmen contemporary dance students have spent the past semester choreographing their own pieces for the first time.
Opening Thursday, “New Moves” showcases 14 dances created by the members of the Choreographic Performance Project class, a required course for all contemporary dance majors.
With the help of their casted dancers picked from other contemporary dance students, peer and faculty mentors and their teacher Selene Carter, students set movements, sound, lighting and costumes.
“The history of modern dance is founded on revolution,” Carter said. “Our tradition is a tradition of innovation. We’re asking each choreographer to find their own language, so that takes shape in different ways.”
As taught over the last half century, dance choreography must have a formal idea or intent, Carter said.
However, contemporary dance can draw from all different styles.
Postmodernism influence created other possible approaches that have nothing to do with a message.
A major theme throughout all of the compositions is relationships, Carter said.
Choreographers explore the individual as compared to the group, how people exist in communities and how people can support or marginalize each other.
Juniors Susie Wopat and Maggie Black both created pieces discussing that theme.
“I have a brother with autism, so I wanted to do something with that,” Wopat said. “I started thinking about how people get labeled, and autistic people get labeled in what they can and can’t do. I pulled it out to a bigger spectrum, more about how people are put into boxes where they don’t need to be.”
Wopat’s piece, “Unbound,” begins with a voiceover of a radio show segment, where a doctor with autism describes how he overcame being stuck in his own box.
Wopat uses the spoken words to show that he can do what anyone else can do, just like her brother.
At the end of the dance, a single dancer walks out of the box around her created by the other dancers’ bodies.
Black said she wanted to focus on the realization that every person goes through struggles, big or small.
She uses sound elements like weather alerts and soundbites of a survivor of the recent Paris attacks.
“It evolved into how we go through life, and we don’t really focus on what is really precious at that time,” Black said. “We think about our own issues, but we don’t take care of the people around us, and we don’t really know what these people go through.”
Contemporary dance feels more inviting than other styles because it is so personal, Black said.
Contemporary dance can hold elements of any other style, and its all-encompassing feeling is welcoming.
People tell stories with their body language every day, Wopat said.
Dance is just another way of communicating, and even small gestures can convey stories and information.
Both Wopat and Black utilized their cast of dancers to build their choreography.
They incorporated dancers’ improvisation, which meant being flexible with their original plans for their pieces.
Carter said this is a natural part of the choreographic process — choreographers make the dance they are supposed to make, not the dance they intended.
“As a mother, I know you incubate your child for nine months and you fantasize about what they are going to be like,” Carter said. “Then they don’t come out with the features you thought, but you love them nonetheless. Dance has that property. You end up loving and being so enthralled and delighted by what you make, but you have to distance yourself from some of your original intentions.”