Deputy Arts Editor Avery Baumel talks to CoLab’s board members and reviews the result of their new choreographic residency program.

CoLab isn’t easy to describe. Formally, it’s Columbia’s performing arts collective dedicated to encouraging new and exciting student-produced art. Informally, though, it’s so much more. The collective hosts weekly jams, spaces to come together and freely dance, move, and improvise, and they put on a showcase each semester of new student choreography.

“It’s kind of a safe space to be able to make things,” said executive team member Olivia Theard (BC ‘26) where students can “explore creatively, in whatever way they want.” The collective encourages improvisation and experimentation, making for an exciting, welcoming space to create art, largely in the form of dance.

This weekend, for the first time, CoLab presented an extension of those goals in the form of the “Big Jam,” the culmination of a months-long choreographic residency for six student choreographers.

CoLab’s president, and one of the six choreographers, Katie Sponenburg (BC ‘24) said the idea for the residency emerged early last spring, when she realized that there were very few opportunities for long-form contemporary student choreography on campus.

“We wanted to give people more opportunities to have longer rehearsal sessions, longer time, a little bit more support, just to see what could happen,” she explained. Taking inspiration from the Barnard dance department showcases, which invite four professional, external choreographers each semester to create new work on Barnumbia dancers, and from Columbia Ballet Collaborative’s student choreographer program, the residency was born. 

Choreographers applied at the end of the spring semester, and if picked, worked with their dancers from last September until now to create a new piece. CoLab’s approach was largely “hands-off,” Sponenburg said, since the goal was to allow choreographers to experiment freely. 

Saturday night’s performance of the six finished works made it clear that CoLab is accomplishing its goals and more. The student choreographers—Sponenburg, Sophia Sowinski (BC ‘24) Rosie Elliott (BC ‘24), Liz Radway (CC ‘24), Anya Trumbach (SEAS ‘25), and Idea Reid (BC ‘25)—each created pieces that felt excitingly new, personal, and vibrant.

Sowinski’s “Near Miss” began with electronic, mechanic music, its dancers (Reid, Maddy Doty (BC ‘26), Danielle Schmode (BC ‘27), Parker Whitehead-Bust (BC ‘24), and Grace Woleck (BC ‘25)) dressed in all black and moving with precise robotic intention. Quickly, though, cracks emerged: in one captivating moment, Doty, close to the floor, seemed to get stuck in repetitions, until Reid noticed, touched her, and broke the pattern. “Near Miss” was deeply interested in isolating body parts—the ribcage, an arm, a knee—and swinging or pushing or bending them, building momentum and letting it take the dancers to new places. There was a kind of isolation for the individual dancers, too, in their own worlds, until they suddenly broke out of that solitude to find connection with another dancer. It was breathtaking, especially in the moments of silence at the end of each section.

Before Elliott’s “Call to Order” came into full focus, it was already moving: lights emerged on shadowy figures (Trumbach, Sydney Alleyne (CC ‘27), Annie Cheng (CC ‘24), Alice Lander (BC ‘25), and Bella Welling (BC ‘25)), moving expansively on different levels. Slowly, they noticed each other’s presence and formed a geometric tableau before breaking apart into a contorting amoeba. The beat of the music pulsed through the floor and seats, immersing the audience in the performance. Elliott’s choreography was interested in the idea of play: dancers skipped in circles, or hooked elbows and ran as fast as they could before falling to the ground. This kind of play was strong, decisive, and powerful, creating an interesting dynamic that oscillated between freedom and control, tension and release. 

Radway’s “Unstrung” elided the distinction between performance and observation, beginning with a dramatized version of warm-ups. The dancers (Brooke Cullen (CC ‘25), Kaiden Currie (CC ‘27), Victoria Gonzalez (CC ‘27), Georgia Ehrlich (BC ‘27), Abby Mankin (BC ‘25), and Suzanne Ye (BC ‘26)) played with tendus, neck rolls, and stretches, first languidly pulling their movement to the edges of their range of motion, then shifting to sharp, rhythmic repetition. Radway’s duets were particularly striking, especially a brief, but haunting sequence for Currie and Ehrlich. Gravity and momentum felt like their own characters, and whirling lifts often ended in striking melts and falls to the floor. “Unstrung” ended with the introductory music to “Waltz of the Flowers” from “The Nutcracker,” as the dancers, in a line, executed a percussive series of steps, inevitable, repetitive.

“Holopursuits” featured a radio, which could easily have felt overdone, but in Trumbach’s hands, was compelling and exciting. These dancers (Mankin, Trumbach, Welling, Daniela Cordovez (CC ‘26), Carol Davis (BC ‘26), Isabel McFarland (BC ‘26), and Grace Petrusek (BC ‘25)) were otherworldly, many with face glitter or starry hair clips. Walking towards the audience, they stare, cover an eye, turn, afraid and hiding, maybe, or purposeful and unbothered. Trumbach sat at a table, fiddling with the radio, as Mankin explored the possible interactions with the table and Trumbach, before they abandoned the radio and began a careful, slow, moving duet. Later, Trumbach stood and McFarland sat, reaching their arms and shifting their weight in the same ways from two vantage points. It felt like a beautiful exploration of perspective and intimacy.

Sponenburg explained that she likes “to create different types of worlds” in her choreography, and her piece, “Terminal 13,” was inspired by both the darkness and the joy of humanity. “We can create something as fabulous as a plane and use it to create such destruction,” she mused. Those influences were clear in her piece, which began with Annika Voorheis (BC ‘24), reaching, leaning, grasping to the sounds of radio static. A large fan in the corner of the stage was turned on as Voorheis reached her arms out, slowly rocking, mimicking an airplane. Sponenburg’s dancers (Alleyne, Laura Jiang (CC ‘25), Tobi Lee (BC ‘24), and Eliza Voorheis (BC ‘25)) were exceptional, as intense energetic movement dissolved into menacingly slow walks, to mimed sobbing, screaming, dramatic falling. Then “Twist and Shout” came on, and as Voorheis sang into an imaginary microphone, it was hard not to smile. The dancers jammed, wiggled, and rocked out, before running forward, strumming their guitars, falling to the floor, and, in the last moment, looking up at us. (My notes read, simply, “YES!!”)

As its name would suggest, the last piece on the program, Reid’s “Free Your Mind,” was relaxed and yes, free. Its movement felt natural for every one of its dancers (Theard, Sowinski, Woleck, Sarah Ashkin (BC ‘27), Pramit Ghatak (CC ‘27), and Larissa Souki (CC ‘27)), who each brought a different kind of personal, playful energy to the work. Ashkin rippled along a diagonal, impressively fluid; Ghatak held himself regally, controlled even in moments of letting go; Souki and Theard found a soft, dreamy, floating quality of movement together. It was a deeply technical piece, but also one that, like so much else on the program, embraced joy. Theard wiggled her leg; Souki copied, tried a new variation; then Ashkin emerged to try a new movement; eventually, the whole cast was on stage, repeating, learning, exploring, embracing the rhythm of the music. When the dancers bowed at the end, they did one last wiggle first. 

For a program featuring the results of six completely independent choreographic processes to feel so cohesive was surprising and wonderful. Threads of intention, movement, and energy flowed between every piece, and the transitions were easy and natural. After every piece, the audience broke out into hushed, energetic chatter. 

“I feel like we put on a really great first edition of the show,” Theard said. “I was so in awe of what everybody created.” It was amazing, she said, to see pieces of the choreographers’ and dancers’ personalities come out through their work in a new way.

Reflecting on the experience, Sponenburg returned to something she’s said before, that dance in America is dead. She pointed to the diminishing existence of social dance and to the institutionalization of dance as strict and technical, creating barriers to involvement. 

“If you’re thinking of dance, people always are like, can you do this?” She lifted her arms as if to do an arabesque. “It’s so strange, because that is such an imposition on one’s body, when anyone can dance.”

The Big Jam, she hoped, was a counterargument to that, as a space that lets dance be a collective, joyful experience, and as a place to simply come together and move and see movement.

“Even just having come to see the show, you’re contributing to dance,” she pointed out.  

That philosophy and that joy were present in every moment of the Big Jam. Intensely technical phrases were displayed in close conversation with loose, unadorned movement. These choreographers were having fun (Sponenburg’s “Twist and Shout” air guitar, Trumbach’s glitter, Reid’s wiggles, Elliott’s play, Sowinski’s exploratory glitches, Radway’s percussive rhythm), which made their art feel that much more important and interesting.

There is wonder in technical control, and there is wonder in experimental freedom. The trick is having both, and CoLab happily and masterfully embraced that challenge. The result is that their dance was unmistakably, defiantly alive.

See CoLab’s Instagram for up-to-date times and locations of weekly Jams on Fridays, for upcoming information on their spring Movement Lab showcase, and for auditions for next year’s choreographic residency.

Alice Lander in Rosie Elliott’s “Call to Order” via Milly Hopkins