Senior Dance Concert

The JMU Senior Dance Concert was produced and choreographed by the graduating seniors who majored in dance as part of their final thesis. The dance concert was held on February 11-13th at the Forbes Theater. The dance performances had mixtures of ballet, contemporary, modern, and hip-hop dance combined to create exciting and alluring dance pieces. The theme that the seniors chose for their final performances was “home”. The first dance began with the lights off and the stage dark. Then slowly the dancers walked out from behind the curtains and the lights came on. Beginning their dance, the dancers moved in fluid motions walking across the stage, performing graceful movements with their bodies. In one part of the dance, one of the dancers took another dancer and carried her on her back for several steps. This simple action seemed to demonstrate a comforting act, as though the dancer was carrying the other dancer to a place of well-being. This dance was beautiful to watch, and had several powerful moments. In another dance, the dancers had on modern and hip-hop clothes,
including baggy pants, hoodies, and sneakers. This dance was fun and relatable to listen to and watch because of the well-known pop culture theme integrated into the dance. The audience had the loudest reaction to this dance and seem to enjoy the teenage vigor and enthusiasm that was part of the dance. In truth, I believe that the flashy clothes along with the well-known song may have caused the audience’s attention to drift from the dance itself and become more focused on the music. Nonetheless, I still believe that the dance was well choreographed and performed amazingly. Throughout the dance concert, it was hard not to notice that there was only one male dancer. I believe that the fact that he was the only male dancer made his performances stand out a bit more from the other dancers who were all female. Moreover, he was an incredible dancer, performing slow, fluid movements then switching to fast, hip-hop dance, and even doing a few splits. In addition, I believe that having a male dancer added to the dance concert as a whole since dance moves were able to be implemented that would not have been possible without a male dancer. For instance, the maneuvers where the male dancer gracefully lifted the female dancer into the air and smoothly returned her to the ground. Overall, I believe that the male dancer performed marvelously and added a special addition to the dance concert as a whole. One thing I was especially impressed with was the final modern dance routine that was choreographed to a song that was sung by another one of the JMU students.
There were no other sounds other than the girl singing while playing her Ukulele. Colorful lights beamed down on the dancers giving off different wavelengths of light from soft pink to yellow to blue hues that streamed around the dancers. The costumes that the female dancers wore were mainly pale or neutral colors that did not flash or distract the audience from the movements they were performing. Truly, I believe that this added a beautiful effect to the overall dance. This dance was a cumulation of the end and it seemed to state the dancers’ farewells and goodbyes to the place that they had called home for the last four years of their lives. It was a powerful performance full of emotion and
excitement. Overall, going to the JMU Senior Dance Concert was a wonderful experience that I will not forget. Truly, the way that the dancers moved and swayed furthered my desire to learn the art of dance.
I will never forget this experience, as this was the first formal dance performance I had ever attended, and I must say it did not disappoint.