Students and faculty will dance their way to the Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium stage this weekend for the 2014 Winter
Dance Concert.
“For my piece, we have been rehearsing since last semester,” said Chengxin Wei, a dance professor who choreographed a piece for the concert.
The concert will have seven modern dance pieces, all performed by dance students at the university. This show rewards not only the students’ hard work but the faculty’s hard work
as well.
“This show is once a year for showing faculty talent, and, of course, the dance students’ dancing talents,” Wei said. “This show also has collaboration with different departments. For example, there are two different pieces composed by the music students from the music department and I think that is very great. It’s a great way to collaborate.”
Performers such as Emma Rumberg started her career as a young child, and later in life realized she wants to pursue a career doing what she loves.
“My grandma was a ballerina when she was younger and I would go over to her house and I would put on tights, my leotard and shoes.” said Rumberg, a senior dance major who has been dancing for 18 years. “She put two mirrors sideways and she would teach me ballet steps, so before I could even take classes, my grandma and I would practice downstairs in her house.”
Once Rumberg was older, her mother enrolled her into Ballet Western Reserve, a dance school in Youngstown, Ohio, where she trained until she graduated. For Rumberg, the hard work paid off.
“I’m glad that I practiced that much,” Rumberg said. “Dance is something that always makes me feel at home, and it’s something that I wouldn’t know my life without it because I’ve done it ever since I was 3, and that is what I know.”
Students have been practicing for months for this performance but it’s a lifetime of dance that brought them to now.
“I view it as a career now,” Rumberg said. “When I was growing up, I always had the idea in my head that I wanted to be a ballerina because I came from a ballet school and that is what we did. I didn’t want a job doing the same thing nine to five, that just wasn’t something that would feed my soul.”
Some don’t know what they want to do when they are very young, but according to Emma’s mother, Laura Rumberg, she always knew.
“I recognized that she was going to pursue this career when she first started performing,” said Laura, who also pursued a degree in the arts. “That’s really when she got the bug to be on stage. It makes me nervous that she’s going in this career, but I am very happy for her.”
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