A Celebration of Movement and Growth for Dance Seniors

Skidmore College senior dance majors have just come off of an amazing weekend filled with joy, sweat, and tears. The annual Senior Coda class, taught by Associate Chair of the dance department Jason Ohlberg, has come to a head with the final showing for the dancers before their graduation. This celebration included seven pieces in a variety of styles and showed a range of different talents from choreographers, lighting designers, and dancers.

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Community, Tradition, and Celtic Music: Ida Mihok restarts Irish Dance club at Skidmore

Being a slim five percent Irish, heritage was almost certainly out of the picture. The remaining culprit was the prancing Celtic music her family has always listened to—along with, of course, her own being in the right place at the right time. Whether by fate or coincidence, though, one part of the story remains clear: when a then-seven-year-old Ida Mihok saw her first Irish dance performance in a local theater, she knew she had to try it herself. Eleven years later—with just as many years of dance experience in her back pocket—Mihok is a freshman at Skidmore, working to revive the school’s Irish dance club as its new president.

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Rediscovering Dance in a Time of COVID and Racial Injustice: A Look into Dance Community Conversations and Gadria Conlan ‘21

COVID-19 has brought forth a time of incredibly isolating experiences that have turned lives and livelihoods upside down. I wanted to know how others were dealing with the present situation. I reached out to Gadria Conlan ‘21, a member of the group Dance Community Conversations, to see how the broader dance community was dealing with these uncertain times.

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Waltz of My Mind, A Poem

And a one, two, three—

Down rabbit holes, I follow my Thoughts

ticking off all my faults

seemingly never coming to a halt.

Andante—

Treading above waves of uncertainty

the ocean exhales forcibly.

My heart pounds steadily, artfully.

Crescendo—

The line tries to voice the rhythm,

echoes of an imperfect cadence

cannot play to fill the musical chasm.

Fortissimo—

Conductor of my orchestra

cannot direct if the musicians

refuse to perform in harmony.

Fermata—

I try to forget, to mend

Myself with bandages of chords

only to remember the motif again.

Repeat sign.