CoLab’s second annual Student Choreographic Residency was a huge success, with performances that engaged, startled, and inspired the audience. 

What is the body for? What can it do? CoLab’s Parallel Play asked these questions over and over again and refused to settle into any firm answers. The program confronted the audience with movement that veered through all sorts of genres: contemporary, starkly modern (Martha Graham’s ghost was very much in the theater), and a chaotic kind of performance art. In the works since June 2024, this show was CoLab’s second time presenting its annual Student Choreographic Residency. The six pieces on display featured students as dancers, designers, technicians, creators, and visionaries. The title of the showcase, “Parallel Play,” invoked the weird, surreal, and unlimited imagination of childhood that ran like a thread through the otherwise disparate six pieces. 

Act I opened with “A Private Fanfare,” choreographed by Eliza Voorheis (BC ‘25). Its program note, a Clarice Lispector quote, read: “It’s hard because I need to share what I feel with you,” a frankly devastating statement that proved an apt description of the piece’s emotional project. The movement itself was subtle, spare, quietly universal. The costumes were deceptively simple (classic Americana: denim jeans, white tees, bare feet), the music a subtle backdrop allowing the dancing to stand out in full force. The piece started calmly enough, with one dancer carrying out a phrase that eventually phased the rest of the cast into motion. The flow was meditative and wrenchingly intentional. Dancers crashed and leaned into each other like waves passing back and forth. Especially beautiful was the duet between Shaye Hazen (BC ’27) and Lynn Wilcox (BC ‘27), which resonated with a genuine humanity that left me on the brink of tears. The two dancers crawled over and curled into each other, play-wrestled, laughed, rested their heads on each other’s chests. In a surreal, semi-comedic final image Olivia Ho-Herrera (GSAS ’26) forced both of their bodies into one sweater as Danielle Schmode (BC ‘27) and Dahlia Seidel (BC ‘25) interlocked and played two trumpets live on stage. 

The next piece was Sydney Alleyne’s (CC ‘27) “The Block.” Near-constant motion characterized this piece, which cycled smoothly through different tones and formations. Gorgeous, balletic lines were juxtaposed with heavy, pulsing stomps; dancers broke out from the group into solos, clumped together in unison, and dispersed across the stage in a frenzy of wild, individual movement. In a CoLab choreographer spotlight post, Alleyne described her piece as exploring “the complex entanglement of relationships that is characteristic of life in a city,” a statement I read after viewing Act I that made a few things click together in my head. One of the most memorable moments of “The Block” was a sequence of slow strobe lighting, somehow evoking both lightning and the passage through a dark subway tunnel. A pedestrian soundtrack featuring, at various moments, the sound of subway announcements or the clattering ambiance of a jazz club, enhanced this visual and movement-based exploration of the city. 

What followed was without a doubt the night’s standout performance, “Prodigal Daughter.” Choreographed by Thy-Lan Alcalay (BC ‘25), the piece was aggressive, groundbreaking, and dazzlingly fierce. The lights came up on Georgia Bryan (CC ’26) lying in a contortionist pose, legs bent above her, toes next to her head; Sophia Arnaboldi (BC ‘25), was crouched behind her, braiding her hair. The pair were uncomfortably close to the audience, making disconcerting amounts of eye contact (I would know: my press ticket landed me a reserved seat front and center). With slicked-back hair and tongues dyed blue, wearing only nude bras and shorts with scattered decorative ribbons tied to fingers and hair, the presentation was unsettling right from the start. It only went further. Dancers prowled, leapt, scrawled STUPID PEOPLE SHOULDN’T BREED (a reference to the Jenny Holzer Truism engraved on a bench outside Barnard Hall) on the wall with chalk. Arnaboldi, in an exemplary demonstration of vocal control, used their voice to produce screaming, chittering sounds in a haunting spectrum of the female experience: in one long yodel they alternated between sounds of orgasm, painful scream, and childlike laughter. The choreography, which featured awkward legs-spread poses, moments of intentionally unflattering cold lighting, and lots of boob-grabbing, was an unflinching reclamation of the female body in all its glory. The ritual nature of it all gave the piece a modern-day Rite of Spring feeling. Its brutal attack on the audience didn’t stop with the end of the piece, either; the performance seeped into intermission as the dancers cleaned the chalk writing off the wall while continuing to screech, giggle, and jump.  

Intermission left me reeling, scrambling for my notebook to jot down impressions before they left my mind. The intensity (and length) of each piece, especially presented consecutively, was jarring in an exciting way, and before I knew it the lights were dimming again. 

There’s a special quality of worldbuilding necessary for contemporary dance, one that’s unique to the medium. Language isn’t able to play the expository role it usually does in literature or film; even with pantomime, it’s hard for the choreographer to tell you exactly what message or moral you should be grasping in a piece. The burden of analysis is always on the viewer, who is hunting for clues the minute the lights come up. I was reminded of this notion by the first two pieces of Act II, Ty Nagvajara’s (CC ‘25) “Time Out” and Mia Generoso’s (CC ’25) “Kempe.” Both pieces featured a person sitting on stage, observing events. In Nagvajara’s piece, this was Eleanor Hutchinson (BC ’27) wearing silk pajamas, lurking in the back right corner, and sometimes sleeping (you get the impression it might be her birthday, and that no one remembers this). In Generoso’s, it was played by Voorheis, who was listed separately in the program as “The Writer.” She sat in the front right, illuminated by a spotlight, with a stool, a stand, and a pen, carefully recording something the audience wasn’t privy to. A person sitting and observing events on stage automatically makes you think of yourself, when you’re sitting in the audience and observing events on stage. Though drastically different in tone and content, both of these pieces led me to consider the role of the spectator in ascribing meaning or emotional value to movement. Who decides what’s worth writing down? What’s worth sleeping through? 

The worlds of “Time Out” and “Kempe” were nevertheless incomparable. Nagvajara’s piece was modern, featuring disco lights and party hats and puffer coats. Dancers shed and picked up layers of clothing (with all the basketball shorts styled over dance pants and legwarmers, it looked like a contemporary dancer’s NYFW, sponsored by Adidas) seemingly at random. Their bodies collided, got kicked around, ran in circles. I got the sense there was a narrative, but I couldn’t quite tell what it was—an uncertainty that was overall tempered by the energy and collective motion of the choreography.

Generoso’s piece, on the other hand, was steeped in the past. It was inspired by The Book of Margery Kempe, a medieval manuscript authored by the titular Margery Kempe, a Christian mystic who claimed to have been a first-hand witness to various biblical events such as the Crucifixion and the Nativity. Besides the Writer, the dancers (who are all listed in the program as “Margery Kempe” herself) were dressed in loose white tunics and pants accented with simple gold embroidery. Liturgical music played, and the dancing was solemn, slow, serious. Like “Prodigal Daughter” (though much tamer), the piece included vocals: to suggest narrative, dancers approached the Writer, pointed, and cleared their throats to indicate they were beginning to tell their story. The gravity of the scene was offset by the anachronistic use of props: modern baby toys were thrown out of a plastic briefcase, and dancers in a long chain unspooled a shiny roll of red ribbon (again reminiscent of Rite of Spring). The result was an enchantingly mystical (though also, like Nagvajara’s piece, narratively mysterious) performance.

The closing performance of the night was Olivia Théard’s (BC ‘26) “Spill,” a piece that started slowly, in cool lighting and silence. Martha Graham’s influence was truly inescapable tonight: I spotted cupped hands, phrases repeated on the diagonal, and undercurves everywhere. The soothing sounds of Alice Coltrane’s “Wisdom Eye” paired well with the gentle, repetitive choreography. But as the music shifted to Nina Simone’s “Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter,” so did the vibe: the lights came up warm and amber, reflecting off of the metallic tones of the costumes. The movement became more sultry, more energized; I felt like I recognized notes of flamenco in some of the hip circles and arm twists. A motif of the dance was the dancers’ hands, curled like they were cradling a mug: it gave the impression of having a prop without introducing a physical object, a choreographic choice I enjoyed. In a beautiful use of rhythm and connection, the choreography flowed right with the music, and though I’d at first been hesitant to see the piece as a closer, it was in fact the perfect end to a night of exploration and intense performance. 

What Parallel Play brought to light was the creativity and originality of each of the choreographers. The performances were mature, elevated works that still managed to preserve the unfettered, dreamy qualities of childhood imagination. Each approach was unique in tone, style, and quality. I left feeling liberated, introspective, a fountain of inspiration. Adjectives and phrases burst from my tongue, and I had to open my Notes app on the walk back home so that my impressions didn’t evaporate overnight. The creativity I had seen had nested in me, ready to be reborn and transformed into something new.

Event images courtesy of Milly Hopkins.