Southern Louisville Student Dance Performance

Every year, the University of Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville has a Student Dance concert put on by the students apart of the university’s dance program. This organization is an extremely diverse, unique, and talented group of dancers. The dance concert had nine different pieces that were all different styles of dance. All pieces were choreographed by different student dancers and had different themes and messages. Two pieces stuck out from the rest. These two were Today and Despondency. The piece Today, was an extremely influential and inspiring work of art. The dance involved just one solo female dancer. This piece was entirely choreographed and danced by the same woman, Haley Barker. She created the dance, picked the music,
and created her own costume. In this piece the female dancer overcomes a battle. The dancer used a large prop throughout her piece, which symbolized the every day battles of life. The dance started out by the dancer lying on the folding table propped halfway up, with the lights shining on her. The dancer then slid down the table, gliding gracefully on to the floor. For the rest of the dance, the dancer continued to use the table as a prop. There was few to no movements that did not involve this prop. There was many times where the table looked as if it may not work with the movements. This kept the audience on their feet and the crows felt extremely anxious. Hayley Barker is very admirable for the usage of this prop in her piece. The strength and creativity of the dancer was shown throughout the whole performance. After thinking about what the message of this piece, it was obvious that she meant for this to be somewhat stressful to watch. The large table that she put on her back and moved around represented every day issues and battle that life throws people. The whole piece the dancer had a large smile on her face and it was contagious to the crowd. At the end of the dance, Hayley Barker gave a short soliloquy about keeping a positive outlook, and reminded the crowd to live every day to the fullest. The last piece of the dance concert was the most influential and eye opening dance of the concert.
Despondency, choreographed by Sterling Allen, had a very powerful message and shed light and touched on the issue of rape. This piece was a lengthy dance, and had a story to it. The dance started out with a female dancer on the corner of the stage with the light shining on her while she was lifting up her dress. This symbolized her vulnerability in the situation that was about to take place. After that, a group of female dancers joined her on different parts of the stage, and mimicked her movement of lifting up her dress to the light. The crowd at this point was very confused. The group of female dancer then laid on the ground in a line with their legs spread and took turns sitting up. The second section of the dance focused a group of male dancers. They male dancers gathered in a circle in the middle of the stage. This created a very intense and uncomfortable feeling. This part led into the third section of the dance, which is when the female dancers met them on stage. In this section, the dancers created the story of what seemed like the male dancers get to pick whom they wanted to rape. This was an extremely powerful message and realistic in some parts of the world. This piece showed the importance of knowing about rape culture and how it affects people. The feeling of the crowd after it was over was a very somber feeling. It was influential because of how the story was
told, and how much emotion was put into the choreography. The Student Dance Concert was very well organized, unique, and full of talented dancers. It was extra admirable because of how much time the choreographers and dancers put into the pieces. It is very special that SIUE can offer such a good program, and let everyone experience the art of dance.