Image courtesy of Emma Smith ‘23
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.
Bella Pedulla ‘23 opened the show with a 12-minute interlude of Excerpts from Sleeping Beauty. Not only did Bella stage this piece but she also danced in the show en pointe with her fellow castmates.
Hannah Danziger ‘23 followed Bella by performing a solo choreographed by Nijawwon Matthews titled The Pain of Knowing… Matthews comments on the piece, “this piece is about the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.” Coincidentally, Danziger worked as a post-abortion medical assistant at Buffalo Women's Services this past summer.
Angela Tanzer ‘23 performed a solo choreographed by lecturer Christy Williams titled Bargaining. The solo featured a student lighting designer Ashley Lupien ‘24 which complimented Tanzer's long blue skirt that was heavily incorporated into the choreography.
Backstays of the Sun was the second of two group pieces presented in the show, choreographed by Lea Leventhal ‘23. This group of six dancers underwent a moving storyline that explored her history, “situated in a time of immense change, and transformation in my life, shedding old layers and growing into something new,” Leventhal says. Backstays of the Sun included lighting design by student Talia Shoshani ‘24 who also assisted as a stagehand.
Francesca Griffin ‘23 performed a solo piece choreographed by Adam Barruch that involved intense floorwork and intricate hand movements. The piece, Timbres, “was choreographed in three rehearsals at Gibney Studios in Manhattan.” In a moment alone with Griffin, she reflected on her journey, “I look back at my experience and I’m super grateful I was able to work with a choreographer who came from a performing arts high school… I gained a wider range of movement vocabulary and insight on what diving into a career in the dance world looks like.”
The final soloist of the performance, Jasmine Karaul ‘23, performed and choreographed a solo titled [home] displaced. This very intimate piece, as told by Karaul, is “a personal exploration about holding an international identity in non-international spaces.” She included several audio clips of conversations with fellow international students that displayed a similar struggle of finding home and defining the term. Karauls solo was designed and board operated by student designer and senior Angelica Pantginis ‘23.
Brooke Slesh ‘23, dance major, became involved in the Senior Coda show by embracing the role of stage manager. She designed the lighting for multiple pieces from Sleeping Beauty, The Pain of Knowing…, Timbres, [home] displaced, and called the cues for the entirety of the show.
Xenia Zimmerman ‘23, projected a film titled Patterns of Movement, that explored the intricate set of movement needed for both dance and horseback riding. Her hard work through the editing and filming process came to a beautiful cultivation of a ten minute film that was projected on the cyclorama of the theater.
The Senior Coda show was performed on Saturday, April 1st at 2:00 pm and 7:30 pm. Both live streams are available on the Skidmore Dance Website and linked below for the accessibility of the general public. As the seniors go into their last few weeks of the semester and are able to take a load off from their senior projects, I hope everyone can observe the hard work, growth, passion, and perseverance that was displayed during Saturday’s performances.
https://vimeo.com/event/2858655 - 2 PM Showing
https://vimeo.com/event/2858663 - 7:30 PM Showing