Keene State dance students are preparing to set the campus ablaze with the upcoming 51st annual Evening of Dance performance.
Professor of Dance Cynthia McLaughlin, the director of the show, said this year’s performance will feature four numbers, including a number choreographed by guest artist Shakia Barron.
McLaughlin said the first number of the show, her number, titled “Castello A Sette,” tells a story through a dream.
“I was really asking questions around what it means to be a family and archetypes and identity and my Italian heritage,” McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin said her favorite part of Evening of Dance is the finishing process.
“The students start to find new things in the dances, and it really just starts to take on its own life,” she said. “This in-between time before we start to share it with an audience, where we’re all in the dark working together to make the final choices.”
Senior Alex Walton is involved with three of the four pieces and said he loves all of them for different reasons.
“All three are very, very different in their own way,” Walton said. “There’s just different things I love about each of them that make them their own.”
Walton said his favorite thing about Evening of Dance is “getting to be part of a creation process with professionals from other places.”
“You get outside perspective of dance, and you get the culture from somewhere else brought in,” he said.
Junior Cassidy White is also involved with three pieces, acting as dance captain for adjunct faculty Molly Lynch-Clark’s piece.
“Her piece is about dinosaurs this year, but we focused on a lot of themes like toxic masculinity [and] world issues, and then we focused in on big dinosaur shapes,” White said. “We had a lot of research with extinction.”
White said that she enjoyed working on Lynch-Clark’s piece.
“I just really enjoyed the quality of movement that we’re doing, and it’s very challenging,” she said. “You could always do more with it, even just changing little things for each part.”
White said that the rehearsal process feels rewarding for the dancers.
“It always ends up coming together in the end, and it’s super rewarding because you’re living in this rehearsal process for months at a time,” she said. “So you’re really engaged in the work and you really feel [like] a part of it.”
White said that she enjoys participating in Evening of Dance every year.
“I always tell people it’s the best, most rewarding experience that you can get at Keene State,” she said. “I definitely wouldn’t be at this college if it wasn’t for the dance department here and just the community that we’ve built in my three years here.”
“I love when we have more people join because it’s allowing for more possibilities for each piece,” she added.
Evening of Dance runs April 17 to 19 with performances at 7:30 p.m. (with a 2 p.m. matinee on the 19) in the Main Theatre of the Redfern Arts Center. Tickets can be purchased online or at the box office. Tickets are free for students and faculty, $10 for non-KSC students and seniors and $15 for the general public.
Emily Sloane can be contacted at
esloane@kscequinox.com
This article was updated on April 29, 2025, to correct a typo in Shakia Barron’s name. The Equinox apologizes for this error.
