Windfall Dancers, Saffar present 'Arabian Nights' at the JWAC

The top floor of the John Waldron Arts Center on Friday night was transformed into a world that effortlessly used movement to bring a book to life.\nWindfall Dancers, a Bloomington-based modern dance company, interpreted various stories from "Arabian Nights," the well-known literary classic, and presented them through a combination of modern and Middle Eastern dance. Every piece was choreographed by a different Windfall company member, allowing true creative freedom and variety for the interpretation of the stories.\nThe performance first began with the dancers coming out from the wings to take a seat around the dance space, which was theater-in-the-round. This setup, along with the dancers' close proximity, helped to engage the audience and make them feel truly involved in the production.\nThe movements in the pieces expressed a multitude of human emotions, but it was really the dancer's facial expressions that captured the essence of that. From despair to jubilation, they were able to get these feelings across to an audience, no matter what the story was or who was dancing.\nThis was often the hardest part in choreographing for the show, said IU graduate student Claire Renaud, who choreographed "The Merchant and the Demon." \n"The most challenging part of telling a story without words is to not only have literal movements, but enough opportunities for facial expressions to enable the story to come across," Renaud said.\nRenaud's piece was a tender tale of a family being terrorized by a demon. She explored how the families quickly go from happiness to complete fear. The moments between the two children and their parents were quiet and heartfelt, and it was startling to both the audience and the dancers when the demon arrived to stir things up. \nThe costumes in the performance were of traditional Middle Eastern design and were bright and colorful. Various props, like golden goblets and vibrant scarves, were used at times to help better convey the story that was presented. \nLive music was played throughout the whole show by two members of the band Salaam, Dena El Saffar and Tim Moore. Moore, who is the percussionist for the group, kept a steady drum beat for each of the pieces while Saffar alternated between a violin, viola, and a joza, an Iraqi instrument that is ancestor to the modern violin. \nSaffar's musical abilities were evident as she effortlessly altered the mood of the audience with each different sound she produced, rounding-out what Windfall was trying to bring to the audience. Between the costumes, the music and the dancers themselves, the show successfully brought the audience into a world that encouraged the human body to do the talking when words are absent.\n"Arabian Nights" runs at 8 p.m. at the John Waldron Arts Center, 122 S. Walnut St., on Feb. 2, 3, 9 and 10. \nTickets are $8 for students, $10 for adults and can be reserved in advance by calling 334-0506. Tickets will also be available the night of the show.