Four years of training culminate in this Senior Dance concert
Three years ago, Leah Crosby waited in anticipation to see the senior class take the stage eager for the day she would take that spotlight.
Now, that day has come for Crosby, who is a senior and one of three soloists in Thursday’s Senior Dance Concert.
“Right now it’s sort of like blind panic, but I’m definitely excited,” Leah Crosby, a senior dancer, said. “This is something that you’re looking forward to from your freshman year when you see the first informal showing of the seniors work.”
Crosby is joined by the other two soloists Curtis Johnson and Annie Scott. Nathan Andary, dance lecturer, said he looks forward to seeing the transformation in the faces of the performers.
“I think they will realize quite a bit about the journey and also realize what they have created,” Andary said. “It looks really great everyone has a very unique poise, and this is going to be a diverse concert.”
Some seniors performing in the concert have even worked over the summer for the concert, and every performer has been working diligently since the beginning of this semester.
Crosby said that you can't help but look ahead from that moment when you see yourself on that stage with your notebook sitting in front of the faculty members, listening to all of the things you could be doing better and all the ways you can push your work to the next level.
“I never would have imagined that I would be someone suffering from senioritis and burn out, but the struggle is real,” Crosby said. “But there’s also the reflection of so much love and investment into the time and energy; and the blood, sweat and tears.”
Crosby’s piece in the senior dance concert is called “7” and the inspiration comes from when she was a child and was indignant that adults didn’t take her seriously about her fears from monsters that lived under the staircase.
She said that she is interested in those social structures that are established when people are young, especially with women, as they grow up and assume that they won't be taken seriously by society.
“I just want a response even if it was ‘why is she doing that’ or ‘I have no idea what that was. I’m confused’ — a reexamination of what is modern dance,” Crosby said. “The inspiration comes from a very specific place, but I don’t necessarily consider the piece failed if the audience doesn’t know what that specific place is.”
Crosby isn’t the only senior that remembers their first year glance at the senior dance concert. Dance senior Annie Scott remembers the past performances that had her excited for three years.
“It’s exciting because we’ve seen it for the past three years,” Scott said. “It’s cool that you’ve seen what so many people have done and you wonder what you're going to do and then when you finally get to have it, it’s exciting and it’s a lot of different emotions.”
Inspiration can come when you least expect it. For Scott, it came during summer when she saw a chair.
“I’ve seen pieces where they involved a chair, but they kind of had it there but then went away from it,” Scott said. “So there was this thought how can it not be like that, and from there, I was thinking what the chair could symbolize.”
She’s dealt with a lot of anxiety throughout the years, which is what her piece is about. Scott’s piece is about anxiety but without being literal on what anxiety is usually associated with.
Scott said that she knew at the age three she wanted to be a performer, and the moment that she saw the Lion King on stage when she was in sixth grade and saw professional dancers as gazelles, she said that she wanted to be a gazelle.
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