“Thursday night, E.J. Thomas Hall was filled with the excited chatter of students, parents, teachers and many others before the start of the University of Akron Dance Company performance. As the lights dimmed, and the crowd became silent, the show began with a wonderful ballet number.”
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Thursday night, E.J. Thomas Hall was filled with the excited chatter of students, parents, teachers and many others before the start of the University of Akron Dance Company performance.
As the lights dimmed, and the crowd became silent, the show began with a wonderful ballet number.
Images Surfacing, choreographed by Cydney Spohn, was a delightful ballet number that was able to truly catch an artistic feel. The curtains opened to reveal the ballet dancers posed on the side of the stage in costumes that had white tops and black bottoms.
As the performance began a strip of white fabric fell from the ceiling, and on it a projection of the dancers on the side of the stage was revealed. This strip hung on from the ceiling for about half of the show.
Dancers on the side would change poses and that would be projected on the screen. While this was happening, dancers in the middle would dance to wonderful live musical performance composed by Bruno Louchouarn.About half way through the piece, the side screen was raised and then the images of the dancers were projected on the back screen.This piece was wonderfully done and was quite interesting.
The next performance was a modern piece choreographed by Nick Carlisle, with music by Sergei Rachmaninoff.
This was inspired by The American Scholar, which was an oration that Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered.
The dancers in this piece were in an assortment of costumes. Everything from army to priest costumes could be seen.The piece had lively piano driven music that worked well with the dance.The piece seemed to be telling the story of a mother nature type character, who was a dancer wearing a nature type costume, who seemed to be trying to bring piece to the people.
She was rejected at first, but at the end was accepted and stood triumphantly in the middle of all of the dancers.
The next piece War was the most different out of all of them.This performance was choreographed by Tom Smith and had excerpt from the film Patton was incorporated throughout it.
It began with a speech given lead actor George C. Scott, while the dancers danced to it.It was interesting.
This modern piece did have music in it, though. About half way through, towards the end, the music began and comprised of mostly flute, woodwinds and string instruments and had a distinct military feel to it.
The last performance by MaryAnn Black was by far the favorite. The piece titled Dancin Fosse was comprised of four dances. The songs to these dances were Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries, Bye Bye Blackbird, I wanna be a Dancing Man and Crunchy Granola Suite.
All of these dances had the classic Fosse jazz throughout them. If one is not familiar with Fosse, think jazz hands.
For all of the dances in this piece the dancers were dressed in black leotards and pants or tights. At one point they even had white gloves a hat and a bowtie. Overall this group of pieces really captured the essence of Broadway.
UADC was a success and very enjoyable show. Those who missed it really missed a good performance.

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