Dance majors showcase inspiration

“Six, seven, eight!” senior Joe Musiel shouts over the music. It’s 10 p.m. on a Tuesday, and in a rehearsal five days before a performance, every second counts.

The music is picking up now, and the dancers are entering the fastest part of a near nine-minute routine.

Musiel stands on the scuffed marley floor of the School of Public Health’s dance studio with his hands on his hips, eyes wide and focused. A blue Cookie Monster hat sits backwards on his head.
 
Musiel’s piece, “The Walls,” is one of nine pieces choreographed by seniors to be performed Sunday at the John Waldron Arts Center as part of a senior contemporary dance major show “Diverging Art, Converging Artists.”  

It is a culmination of a semester’s worth of rehearsals. The group just finished learning the dance last week.

“Some majors have a senior thesis,” senior contemporary dance major Kaylan Knutsen said. “That’s kind of what this is for us.”

While Musiel has choreographed many dances throughout his time at IU, exploring concepts and characters ranging from what it’s like to be left at the altar to what happens to a fallen angel, this is his first piece inspired by a personal struggle.

“I had grown up having walls,” he said. “I was afraid of being hurt.”

Growing up, Musiel moved around a lot. Born in Buffalo, New York, he eventually made his way to Fishers, Ind. Switching schools nearly every year made making new friends more and more difficult. He put up walls to cope, he said.

“I had decided I just won’t make friends anymore,” Musiel said. “And then I got to college, and you’re with people for four years. It’s hard to keep people out.”

The dance, comprised of three sections, shows a similar path.

Knutsen, wearing a white lace dress representing her character’s innocence and naiveté, is pulled slowly on stage supported by several other dancers in navy, representing the walls that both support and hinder her growth.

“Here in college, it’s a personal journey, not feeding into what other people expect of you,” Knutsen said.

The second section is faster and more forceful, as Knutsen’s character realizes she doesn’t want the walls anymore and breaks them down.

Meanwhile, senior Kelli Dowling plays a character that Musiel describes as “the one piece of bad fruit that ruined everything.” The more she tries to fix the walls, the more everything falls out of sync.

“As the piece progresses, I get more of a voice, I guess,” Knutsen said. “Once I have broken Kelli down completely, it’s like a liberation — a freeing of sorts.”

In the final scene, Knutsen’s character looks back at the walls, seeing how life was with them and how her future will be without them.

“It’s kind of like when you dream,” Musiel said. “There are different segments, but you’re asleep the whole time.”

While Musiel said he had this concept in mind from the start, he didn’t begin choreography until he was in the studio with his ensemble and pressed “play” for the first time on his laptop.

“I work the opposite way of most other choreographers,” he said. Rather than preparing material before a rehearsal, Musiel chooses to pull inspiration from the dancers’ energy in the studio.

Musiel said he never writes down his choreography either.   

“Once I teach it to you, it’s yours,” he said. “Because then I’ll forget it, and then I’ll have to come up with something not as good.”

Though Musiel’s dance explains a specific struggle from his own personal experience, he said the audience can understand his choreography in any number of ways.

“That’s the nice thing about dance,” Knutsen said. “It’s always up for interpretation.”