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The ������Ƶ Dance Company presents its annual Spring Choreographers’ Showcase on Friday and Saturday, April 20^th and 21^st at 7:30pm in Cottingham Theatre on the ������Ƶ campus. The concert features ten original contemporary works produced by student choreographers: Quoliyah Byard, Tellayah Dowling, Ashley French, Kaitlyn Green, Amber Kinard, Lydia Ray, Demery Trantham, Vanessa Valdez, and Meredith Yuhas with lighting design by technical theater director, Patrick Faulds.

Several students are producing choreography for the first time at ������Ƶ including First-Year Dance Education Majors Quoliyah Byard and Amber Kinard.  ���ⲹ����’s A Family Matter, an emotionally evocative work, recalls upon personal experience, by utilizing soul-stirring, powerfully expressive movement to convey the importance of relationships. Kinard’s Fixated draws upon personal testimony to create poignant, resting imagery, revealing what it is like to live with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

For There She Was, the premier work of budding choreography Kaitlyn Green, investigates the marriage between literature and movement. Considered an autobiographical narrative by Green, the work “showcases the complex yet mesmerizing mind of Virginia Woolf and her internal battles.”

Vanessa Valdez, a Dance Education major, presents her first choreographic work Stern, rich in its enchanting movement patterns, skillful use of repetition, and earnest delivery.  

Millimeter, a solo choreographed by Ashley French, explores the concept of perspective in the human experience through a brilliant use of time and space, enhanced by her captivating embodiment of subtle variations and nuanced interpretations.

Demery Trantham’s work, Hyper/Hypo examines the practicalities of the brain of someone who has ADD/ADHD. Inspired by the “difficulties and tribulations as well as the creativity and innovation,” the work effectively communicates the juxtaposed mind-set through its spatial design, intricate movement, sweeping passes, and qualitative shifts.

Senior Honors student and outgoing CCDC President, Meredith Yuhas will share two sophisticated, creative, and diverse works. The Stand presents rousing contemporary movement to the voices of the 2017 Times Persons of the Year: The Silence Breakers. Yuhas uses multiple ladders to illuminate the physical metaphor and “commemorate the brave women and men who spoke up against sexual violence, inspiring the growth of the #metoo movement around the globe.” thrown, a solo aerial study, serves as a physical and emotional monologue of feeling. Choreographed and performed by Yuhas, the work “follows the journey back after being completely thwarted from one’s reality.” Seamlessly articulating a beautiful blue aerial sling, Yuhas “works through the ground and air towards reconciliation.”

The ten adjudicated dances represent a diverse mix of concepts and choreographic styles, from aerial dance to works driven by emotions of perseverance, acceptance, and conviction. All ten works, each compelling and distinctive in conception and craft spring from women’s voices and resonate with a mission to articulate the choreographers’ struggles and ideals in a precarious world.

Tickets are $10 General Admission and $5 Senior Citizens/Students. For reservations, call the Cottingham Theatre Box Office at 803.786.3850.