Mount Holyoke College Department of Dance Presents: “Composite Objects:” A Senior Capstone Dance Concert

The Mount Holyoke College Department of Dance presents the annual Senior Capstone Concert, “Composite Objects,” a culmination of a year-long process of research and choreographic inquiry featuring work created by the dance majors of the class of 2024. The concert explores the absurdity of location, girlhood and dreams, traversing the theater, social dance, elevators, and unearthing identities.

About the Program & Choreographers:

“A Fervent Reprise,” by Hope Wampler

In act two of the ballet “Giselle,” the titular character Giselle is awakened from her grave to join the ranks of the Willies, the spirits of women who were betrayed by men and in their deaths seek revenge by dancing men to their deaths. “A Fervent Reprise” reimagines this story as a queer narrative where instead of being dead women taking their revenge, they are people reborn to discover community by finding themselves within it.

“Reading Water,” by Annika Champe

Annika’s process of dance-making is a celebration of the body and experiencing the world through sensation and communication. Her embodied knowledge includes ballet, Bhangra, modern, contemporary, and social dance forms including Garba and Lindy Hop. All of these styles inform both the physical techniques and various ways she engages with dance as a discipline, celebration, play, ritual, and art. In her work, she inquires how challenge and growth can also be a place of comfort and exhilaration.

“More than a mechanical hoist” by Grace Thompson

Grace Thompson hails from Seattle, WA where she began her journey in loving dance. Her works often oscillate between rule-based disciplined movement and space-taking soaring phrases as I seek to reconcile the world’s logic and rationality with its wonder and mystery. In this work, she examines elevators as modes of transportation and containers for unspoken etiquette rules.

“It’s Not That Serious, It’s Just (My) Life,” by Julia Madonick

Her piece asks the following questions: What does it mean to truly be yourself when you are the same as everyone else? What is the catalyst for divergence? Why is it a rebellion to be different when all we’ve ever been told is to be yourself? Thus, Julia’s work attempts to externalize the internal discovery, in hopes of demystifying the transition from childhood to adulthood.

“If You Think It’s Over, Look Behind You,” by Shannon Fornes

Never fond of stillness, Shannon’s creative process centers sensations such as going upside down, spinning, rocking, and shaking as a way to explore their potential and generate choreography, regulate emotional and physical states, and simply exist as movements that feel good to do.

“BAB*” by Mykelle Walton

Mykelle, a multidisciplinary movement artist, invites us to question our bodily relationship to spatial demarcation in her piece BAB*. Inspired by alternative interpretations of quantum mechanical phenomenon, she tumbles us into a seemingly alternate world of possibilities. Perhaps we can flourish there; *between, around, and beside each other.

Performance Dates and Times:
Friday, March 29, 7:30 pm
Saturday, March 30, 7:30 pm

Tickets: $10 General Admission | $5 Student Tickets

“Composite Objects” will be held at Mount Holyoke College in the Studio Theater in Kendall Sports and Dance Complex. For more information or to reserve tickets, please visit https://mhc.ludus.com/index.php or contact us at hglick@mtholyoke.edu  

About the Mount Holyoke Department of Dance
The Department of Dance at Mount Holyoke College offers a comprehensive curriculum with learning goals that emphasize technical training, creative experimentation, and critical/theoretical understanding. The department is renowned for its extensive studio offerings in ballet technique, contemporary/modern technique, street forms, West African Dance and repertory/performance, as well as its rotating offerings in hip hop, jazz, Indian classical dance, Tango, contact improvisation and musical theatre. Theory courses range from Scientific Foundations in Dance to Studies in Dance History and Analysis of Rhythm and Choreography. This range of courses is further augmented by more than one hundred theory and studio courses offered annually through the Five College Dance Department.