By Eric Allen
Dancers told stories with movements rather than words at Blackman Auditorium on Saturday.
The Northeastern University Dance Company (NUDANCO) performed its sixth annual Winter Showcase in two presentations. The show was performed once at 3 p.m. and again at 7 p.m., and featured a variety of dance styles in 15 routines set to different genres of music. The company has 49 dancers total, 19 of whom choreographed the dances for the showcase.
“Watch carefully and you can see dance take shape into the best language imaginable,” NUDANCO President Margaux Cormier wrote in the program. “Each movement represents something that these dancers want to say about their lives.”
Each routine combined a song with corresponding dance moves, costumes and gradient background colors.
The show opened with a dance set to “Whappy Mama,” a Euro-African up-tempo song by the group Zap Mama, and featured dancers in leggings and slouchy tops making animalistic moves and tap dancing. Later, the Santogold Medley routine featured music by the namesake artist and included hip-hop dancing with intricate hand movements performed by hooded dancers.
Allison Ailor, a sophomore environmental science major, danced in the Santogold Medley.
“I’m more of a hip-hop girl than a jazzy-jazz girl,” she said. “For hip-hop you have to have attitude.”
Next came a routine set to Imogen Heaps “Hide and Seek,” choreographed by Cormier, a senior nursing major.
“For me, my dance was very personal,” she said. Cormier said dance helped her express her feelings after a friend of hers died this semester.
“Every movement was a word that described his character,” she said.
In the routine, the dancers wore tops that said “Peace” and “Love,” and walked off stage through the aisles when it finished.
Other routines featured modern, jazz, Irish step and interpretive styles of dance. Vanessa Castro, a NUDANCO member, said modern is her favorite style of dance.
“It’s more about control and release,” she said. “It intertwines with you.”
The costumes varied with each dance, as did the background. Each dance opened by highlighting the black silhouettes of dancers against a colorful background that changed throughout the performance.
The show ended with every dancer performing different styles, followed by a brief message from Cormier.
“I thought it was phenomenal,” said Samantha Laudano, a senior pharmacy major who attended the show. “They put a lot of hard work into it.”
Preparation for the show took about three months, said Castro, a sophomore psychology major. “We started the third week of September,” she said. “We did about an hour per week per show.”
Cormier said the company welcomed eight new dancers this year during auditions in the first week of classes.
Ailor, who recently joined NUDANCO, said she has danced her whole life.
“This is my first semester [with NUDANCO],” she said. “I had a really good time.”
Once new members were selected in the fall, the dancers auditioned their own routines, Cormier said, which culminated in Saturday’s showcase.
“These dancers are so talented,” Cormier said. “They all love it so much.”
Lucas Carriere, a middler architecture major, said he enjoyed the show.
“There was a lot of energy,” he said. “It’s always a good show.”
For the dancers, the recital was more than a series of body movements set to songs, they said. Castro said she doesn’t have thoughts while dancing.
“It’s more about the song, the present,” she said.
Ailor said she just lets her body take over when the song starts.
“You just have to feel the music,” she said.
Similarly, Cormier does not like to over think her routines.
“I let my body do the thinking,” she said. “I’m going to dance as long as my body lets me.”
