The KSC Dance Department shared their talent with the community during their annual Choreography Showcase, held on December 5 and 6.
In the student center’s Mabel Brown Room, audience members watched a collection of contemporary dance pieces choreographed and performed by KSC students.
Interim Program Coordinator for the Dance Department Molly Lynch-Clark, who was the artistic director of the showcase, spoke about the event’s purpose.
According to Lynch-Clark, the showcase culminates from the work of students in her Research and Choreography class. Lynch-Clark said the class is an upper-level course for dance majors, where students go through a research process before choreographing a piece for the annual showcase performance.
“The goal is to find how their research topic and dance intersect in a way to create a process which then becomes what is their final artifact or their final dance piece,” Lynch-Clark said.
Accordingly, Lynch-Clark said the show is largely driven by student work.
“These are their creative projects, definitely,” Lynch-Clark said. “A large part of my role is [being] a mentor for them to have a sounding board to really talk through and work through their work, but it’s their project at the end of the day.”
According to Lynch-Clark, the students’ preparation for the showcase was a semester-long process. Lynch-Clark said this process included holding their own auditions and casting dancers for their piece, doing research on their chosen topic, choreographing their piece and editing their own music among other steps.
“This is a huge way to practice what it’s like to be a professional in the field,” Lynch-Clark said. “There’s a lot of opportunities to learn how to make your own work, to work with a group of other people to produce a show and to have your hands a little bit in the entire spectrum of what it means to work within the performing arts.”
Lynch-Clark said the process of sharing the students’ work with an audience at the showcase was incredibly important for everyone involved.
“It gives the audience a chance to really recognize the power of dance and the art form that we’re doing, so not just the talent and the virtuosity there but also the deep thought and care and research that goes into each piece,” Lynch-Clark said. “It’s really multifaceted what a performance like this can do for those who are a part of it on all sides.”
“The dancers that are part of the show, I think it’s hugely beneficial for them too,” Lynch-Clark added. “To watch their peers step into these leadership roles, to watch them work so hard to produce such a high-caliber show, to really sit with a research topic for months and months and work to bring that to life within their own creative voice and really develop their own artistic messaging.”
Senior Abigail McBride was one of the students who choreographed a piece for this year’s showcase. McBride said this was her second time choreographing for the showcase, after preparing a piece for last year’s performance as well.
McBride said her piece this year was inspired by the concept of women being “maneaters,” specifically focusing on mythological sirens.
“Their lethal, hypnotizing voices were used to show that women shouldn’t have a voice in society,” McBride said. “My goal with making my piece was to reclaim this myth that was used to oppress women in order to uplift them and give them power.”
According to McBride, her cast of dancers played a helpful role in the piece’s creation process.
“My cast is so invested in the process, which made it really easy for me to tell them my ideas and for them to know what I would mean,” McBride said. “My piece in itself is a very theatrical piece, and half of my cast had done something like that before, half of my cast hadn’t. They all just came together and worked so well, even the people who hadn’t done something like that really came into it so wonderfully and it just made it so easy for me to generate ideas.”
McBride said it was exciting for all of the choreographers to be able to share their work with the community through the showcase.
“Art is just something that needs to be seen,” McBride said. “It can be so many different things that I think having 11 different choreographers with all different visions coming together in one show, it’s so many different things that dance can be. I think that’s really amazing for other people to see that it can be so many different things.”
Senior Reilly Salvador attended the showcase and explained why she loves getting to see the choreographers and dancers do what they love to do.
“I love watching them explore their passions and it brings new light to Keene State and to the Theater and Dance program as a whole, because it’s not just theater and dance people coming to see it, it’s everyone coming to see it. It gives people a little sneak peek into what we can do as a department,” Salvador said.
Justin Dearborn can be reached at
