“SCRIPPS DANCES,” the annual spring concert of the Scripps College Dance Department featuring original dance pieces choreographed by students and faculty, takes place on April 17 at 8 p.m. and April 18 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. in Garrison Theater of the Scripps College Performing Arts Center.
The box office opens at 6 p.m. for evening performances and at 1 p.m. for the matinee. General admission is $10 and $5 for seniors, students, and Claremont Colleges faculty and staff. Payment is accepted by cash or check only. For general concert information, please call (909) 607-2934.
SCRIPPS DANCES is the highlight of the dance department’s spring calendar and presents an eclectic range of dance styles. Three students will present their senior dance projects. Scripps College senior Christiana Ho explores the ways in which femininity is performative and how the performance of different feminine roles translates into contemporary dance. Annie Whitford, a senior at Pitzer College, offers an abstract work that looks at resistance and acceptance within sites of confinement, institutionalization and dehumanization and addresses the importance of storytelling in holding onto one’s identity. Michelle Nagler, a Scripps senior, investigates the intersections of her dual major in dance and foreign languages. She explores themes such as disorientation, navigating new environments and evolving relationships between groups and the individual through recorded interviews with French and Spanish-speaking immigrants.
Two dances take their inspiration from Africa. Pitzer junior Stella Hoff’s Re Bina, which means “we dance” in the local language of Setswana, celebrates the belief that music and dance go hand in hand and that every moment of life should take advantage of what both offer, while faculty member, Phylise Smith, shares Sorsonet, an initiation dance of the Baga people of Guinea, West Africa.
Other faculty works include Kirsten Johansen’s choreographic meditation on “the things we are told by ourselves, each other and the larger world, and what we do with those stories,” and Suchi Branfman’s This Is How She…, a movement tribute that honors the women in our lives that teach, guide and mentor us. Choreographed in collaboration with the dancers and set to a score that includes recorded stories, this dance explores what it means to embody the words, physicality and presence of others. Two solos by seniors Ho and Whitford complete the program.