The IU Theatre, Drama and Contemporary Dance Department will present “Faculty Dance: Body to Body” at 7:30 p.m. Friday and at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Ruth N. Halls Theatre. The two-hour production showcases choreography by faculty and two guest artists performed by IU students.
The performance explores the concept of “body to body,” which highlights the transmission of knowledge and emotion through physical motion. The history of passing traditions through bodies is something director Selene Carter said she had been thinking about for a while before deciding on the theme of the concert. She began to think back to her teachers, as some of them are no longer with her, and ponder how they have affected her beyond dance.
“From my teachers and how did they live on in me?” Carter said. “Because they shaped me so profoundly, not just in how I move, but how I sense, how I perceive, how I think.”
Carter’s choreography, specifically made for the production, is called “I Have Nothing to Say and I am Saying It.” Her inspiration for this piece is John Cage, an artist widely known for revolutionizing music using unconventional modes of instrumentation and decision making when deciding time signature, dynamics and more.
Carter said Cage believed that any sound could be made into music and did not want his personal taste to influence the art he was making. So, he would set up conditions to manufacture sound based on chance. He is best known for his song, “In a Landscape,” which is a minimalistic song that has virtually no dynamics and is composed as a piano or harp solo. His methods were based on the Chinese methodology of I Ching, where the user throws three coins of the same value, then attributes a different value to heads versus tails. Then, the user flips the coins six times and adds the totals for all six to tell how to proceed.
Carter took inspiration from Cage, using I Ching to give her the answers on choreography, costuming and light design. Every aspect of her dance was left up to chance. Carter said it was difficult to leave things to chance as a choreographer because she was worried about the end result, yet she stayed faithful to the I Ching methodology.
“It was a crazy process, but I really wanted to focus on John Cage because I feel like he’s someone who teaches us how to stay really experimental in difficult times,” Carter said.
Carter asked four other faculty members to choreograph for the production: Stafford Berry, Elizabeth Shea, Robert Burden and Beatrice Capote. Additionally, she invited Ishmael Koney and Maxine Montilus as guest artists because of their previous work with the department and personal connections within the dance community. There will be a total of seven dances in the production.
Montilus said she was excited to work with the IU Theatre, Drama and Contemporary Dance department again. In spring 2023, Montilus took over for Capote when she was on sabbatical, teaching her classes and mentoring seniors with their capstone projects.
Outside of IU, Montilus serves as a dancer, choreographer and educator in Brooklyn, New York. She serves as a program manager at an organization called Arts Connection, which offers arts education to children. Additionally, Montilus started MV Dance Project in 2019, a program that aims to serve communities through dance.
Montilus’ dance is titled “The World We Want to See.” Montilus was inspired by Nathalie Joachim, a Grammy-nominated Haitian musician that focuses on juxtaposing what she wants to see in the world against the negativity she actually sees.
“I thought about, like, what do I want to see in the world?” Montilus said. “And, so, a world I envision is justice for everyone. Community building with one another and pulling from ancestral wisdom to propel us forward.”
Montilus’ choreography incorporates the fusion of contemporary dance and Haitian folkloric dance. Montilus said the fusion of modern and folkloric dance is important because it emphasizes the idea of pulling from ancestral and cultural wisdom to drive society forward.
Outside of staff and guest artists, student dancers auditioned for the production in the spring semester last year. After the finalization of the audition process, they joined the IU Contemporary Dance Theatre. Over the course of the semester, the students focused solely on “Faculty Dance: Body to Body” choreography. This production is the only showcase of the students’ work as dancers, with no prior concerts for the class.
Montilus praised the students not only for their dancing abilities but also their willingness to learn. She had a 10-day residency to teach the class about her choreography and vision, and she said the students were eager to learn and adapt to a dance style they had never experienced before.
“None of them had really done Haitian folkloric dance before. They were just so open and ready to try new things. Dive right in, no hesitation,” Montilus said. “They’re also just beautiful dancers. They have a great facility. Like, anything I toss at them, they’re like, ‘we could do it.’”
“Faculty Dance: Body to Body” will premiere Friday and Saturday at Ruth N. Halls Theatre, showcasing the culmination of a semester of work and seven choreographed dances by educators and professionals. Tickets are available online and in the box office for $25 for adults and discounted to $15 for students.
