Onward Alone: A Dance Concert with Emphasis on the…Speaking Parts?

Context: Last year, I decided to go to the Dance in Concert. It was a last-minute decision and I have to admit the main reason I went was the free tickets I got from a friend. I expected it to be somewhat neat, but I was knocked off my feet. I absolutely loved it! So, this year, I waited anxiously for the poster-ads to go up. When I saw the kind of corny-looking posed poster with the girl in the pioneer dress, I wasn’t daunted. I assured my roommates the whole pioneer thing was probably only for one number and they’d have other cool dance numbers too. My roommates were doubtful but they bought tickets after hearing my glowing, enthusiastic assurance. Unfortunately, we were all a little disappointed.

Summary: Unlike the traditional Dancers' Company Concert, this year’s program was all based on the same story. Instead of several different numbers with different types of choreography, cool lighting changes, interesting use of props, and various styles of music, the company performed a series of pieces telling stories of Mormon pioneer women and their husbands who left them to join the Mormon Battalion. Some pieces used music, some used visual images projected onto the stage, and some used only narration.

Analysis: I thought the mixing of mediums was a neat idea, but perhaps the pioneer theme was not the greatest for this mixture. It came off as a little sappy at several points during the program. I got particularly squirmy when a video of some of the dancers dancing around on a hill came up at the same time as a spoken narration and dancers on the stage. The bizarre juxtaposition of these didn’t fit the seriousness of the story, and it made me want to laugh. I think it was mainly the film. The lighting was bad, the film quality wasn’t great, and it did a real injustice to the dancers and their subject matter. In all fairness, I was expecting something completely different from this program, so part of my disappointment is due to the fact that the program was organized differently when compared to last year’s concert.

Educational Context: If I could have taken a classroom of students to this concert, it would have set up perfectly for a discussion about how different subject matters match up with different mediums of media/technology. I would prompt my students to think about the differences between dancing to music, dancing in silence, and dancing to speaking parts and how those differences communicated the atmosphere and aura the dancers were trying to create.