Barnumbia’s Fall Dance department showcase was a night of strong, experimental, and emotional performances.

The Barnard Dance Department’s Fall showcase was a journey through the industrial, the modern, the surreal, and the heartwarming. With pieces from four different choreographers and a total of close to fifty dancers gracing the stage, the performance was big, bold, and unafraid to take risks. The result? A show that, though varied in its approaches, tackled philosophical and essential questions: Where do technology and dance intersect? Where do dance and theater? What exactly is the role of an audience at a show? How do we connect and respond to each other? How do we find ways to “love this life?” 

The first piece, “Silent Flight,” choreographed by NiNi Dongnier, began unobtrusively. White fog issued slowly into the space as dancers dressed in neutral shades (but varied textures: white fur pants and shorts were unique costume choices) filed in slowly, assuming sculptural poses. The space was dominated visually by a large rectangular box, one side of which was a screen displaying white points, each of which corresponded to a dancer onstage. Throughout the piece the points would move, collide, and disperse, usually just before the dancers’ real movements, giving the impression of a prefigured spatial destiny. Towards the end, however, the dancers and the points seemed to diverge, raising intriguing questions about free will and how accurately technology can really predict and account for human behavior. 

In the program’s description of “Silent Flight,” Dongnier wrote about her motif of the “T-Pose,” the “default posing for computer recognition” but also a means for the human body to transform “into a giant metaphysical flying object.” The “flocking” action of the piece, where dancers swirled about the stage in complex running patterns, could connote industry, like a fleet of planes—an image accentuated by the screen, which could be interpreted as flight pattern data, and the machinery-sounding music—or nature, like a flock of birds’ migration patterns. Caught between these two extremes is the human figure. The “T-Pose” can also allude to Christ’s crucifixion, an essential representation of humanity in the Christian tradition and in most Western symbolism. Humanity, Dongnier seems to suggest, exists not as a category between the machine and the animal, but as an amalgamation of both extremes. 

The screen onstage also forced the audience to consistently be making choices about what deserved their attention; the prefigured spacial movements, where they could predict what was about to happen, or the actual human bodies moving in the space? The fog and dim lighting made the electronic glow especially eye-catching, and hard to ignore. But if all you watched were the moving points, you were missing the movement and connection accompanying the motion. Dongnier’s investigation of technology’s intersection with dance was insightful, but it also limited the impact of the physical, human movement. 

Next up was a “MinEvent,” the term used to describe “an uninterrupted sequence of excerpts” from the choreography of pivotal modern dancer Merce Cunningham. A MinEvent is site-specific and unique in its staging, which for the showcase was done by Barnard Dance professor and former Cunningham dancer Lisa Boudreau. Since a central tenet of Cunningham’s work was a separation of movement and music, the dancers were first exposed to their accompaniment, a group of six live singers, as they were performing. The vocals, composed by Meredith Monk, had an almost improvisational feel to them; there was lots of vocal play, as the singers slid between registers, harmonized, and made more pedestrian sounds like yelps or hisses. In interludes of silence, the repetitive phrasework, jumps and slides layered with canons (where different dancers do the same movement starting at different times) created its own kind of music and rhythm. 

The dancers, dressed in brightly colored unitards, demonstrated the full breadth of their lines and technique in the almost twenty-minute piece. The movement refused to settle into a genre or tone; slow attitude promenades, weight-sharing, and parallel jumps all coexisted within the piece. The Cunningham style is exceedingly precise and structured, requiring great attention to detail, and the performance certainly conveyed a sharp, well-rehearsed quality. With its similar themes of connection and collectivity, it fit in well with the night’s program.

After a brief intermission, the show resumed with what was certainly the most memorable piece of the night. “Toxic Pedicure,” choreographed by Lena Engelstein and Lisa Fagan, was like a Surrealist painting brought to life, or if Orla from Derry Girls had been given a cast of ten and total creative liberty. The piece began with the house lights still on and the stage lit with electrics, not performance lighting; the dancers, labeled in the program as “performers” and dressed in plaid tracksuits, made intense eye contact with the audience for well over a minute, with varying expressions; some smirking, some afraid, some looking like they wanted to pick a fight. Then suddenly, the piece began; music filtered in and the dancers assumed sharp, shifting poses. When not part of the action, the dancers would press themselves against the walls or the scrim. Just as fast as this section had begun, the tone shifted once again; the lights cut out except for a rotating spotlight, a beat came on, and the dance transformed into a party–one where everyone had a prop of some kind, be it a hose, a chair, a tennis racket, or a plant. One dancer spent the entire time moving from the back of the stage to the front in a slo-mo party haze. 

With another music shift, the dancers immediately cast off their props; more gestural work was employed, with a comedic sequence of waving, a mimed golf game with real golf claps, and cartwheels carrying dancers on and offstage. Unzipping their jackets, the performers revealed turtlenecks patterned with clouds, reminiscent of many a Magritte painting. One dancer, Eliza Voorheis (BC ‘25) got on top of Ty Nagvajara’s (CC ‘25) shoulders; the rest lined up beside them, all holding apples, tensely raising them to their mouths, and slowly biting down. Soloist Thy-Lan Alcalay (BC ’25), wearing a matching cloud-patterned skirt accessorized by a lime-green sash and gloves, sauntered out and began performing a jazzy, nightclub-style number to Frank Sinatra’s “I’ve Got the World on a String,” as the line began rapidly chewing their apples, scattering fruit chunks all over the stage (kind of like this). 

By this point—and definitely during the prolonged eye contact at the beginning—the audience was thoroughly startled, or at least confused. Some people were openly laughing, a reaction that felt not disrespectful but genuine. Blurring the lines and presenting cutting-edge performances seemed to be the night’s theme; and “Toxic Pedicure” was there to remind us that dance, although it can be (and often is) serious, is also creative, varied, and at its root essentially human.

The final piece, Bo Park’s “Back Again,” was an emotional journey; the tone shifted as frequently as the lights, from red to blue to yellow and from solid to lost to hopeful. The large ensemble of dancers, dressed in baggy khaki green pants and shirts recalling military uniforms, were perfectly in sync and extremely precise with their movements. Georgia Ehrlich (BC ’27) and Elijah Ramkere (CC ’26) stood out as soloists for their incredible timing and their emotional rapport with the audience, conveyed by body language and facial expression. The movement was interspersed with projected videos of the cast, taken from both rehearsals and their daily lives, set to spoken-word music like “Burnt Norton–Interlude” by Lana del Rey and “Nani’s Interlude” by Raveena, the lyrics of which end with a powerful statement: “We should be thankful for every moment and spend more happily time […] You will love this life more, you will love this life more.” The multi-media aspect tied the piece nicely to the opener, with its juxtaposition of digital technology and physical movement.

All the works presented were group pieces featuring, at some level, tension between the individual and the collective. The conflict between personal identity and belonging to the larger human species is one that, in today’s polarizing climate, is poignant—especially when detailed through movement, the “universal language.” The optimistic ending of the department showcase honored both sides of the equation—the personal and the collective—and left the audience feeling uplifted, energetic, and joyful.

Images via Julia Discenza.