Tonight I had the opportunity to see The Little Mermaid performed by students in U of M’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and it was wonderful!!! It brought me right back to my childhood and dreams of being a Disney princess. There honestly was not one character in the show that I didn’t like. The audience immediately fell in love with the quirky, adventurous mermaid Ariel (Halli Toland) and the charming Prince Eric (Trevor Carr). And Sarah Lynn Marion rocked those crazy Ursula solos, with thunderous applause after each one! Other noteworthy characters included Ariel’s best friend Flounder (Matthew Kemp), the “smart” seagull Scuttlle (Barrett Riggins), Ariel’s father King Triton (Jordan Samuels), Prince Eric’s guardian Grimsby (Elliot Styles), and the crustacean Sebastian (Liam Allen).
“Under the Sea” (Photo Credit: Peter Smith Photography)
The applauses were endless after numbers like Halli Toland’s beautiful solo of “Part of Your World”, the biggest number with dancing fish and even a giant stingray – “Under the Sea”, and Sarah Lynn Marion’s evil “Poor Unfortunate Souls”. If I could see this show over and over again, I would!
The Little Mermaid can still be seen Saturday and Sunday April 15-16 at 2pm. Tickets are on sale now: Reserved seating $26-$32 and Students $12 with ID.
Ticket information can be found at: http://tickets.music.umich.edu/single/eventDetail.aspx?p=3001
This weekend,6PM Saturday, March 11th, join the Arab Student Association’s show “Arab Xpressions” at the Mendelssohn Theater. There will be performances by students in the group, as well as skits and dances by an arabesque dance troupe. Refreshments will also be served promptly at 6.
Tickets will only be $5 at the door to students. Half of all the proceeds from the night will be donated to the humanitarian organization Zaman International. There are also several free tickets left at the Office of Multicultural Ethnic Students Affairs left to the first students who show up!
Last night’s competition featured three judges: Valerie Postos, A.J. Ashman, and Josh Thurman. The trio gave feedback to each team after their performance, which might have gone faster had their voices been audible.
The first group to dance was Dance 2XS. They are a co-ed hip hop team that had excellent timing throughout their routine. I also thought it was interesting that they formed pairs regardless of gender, unlike the other teams. Their facial expressions also conveyed their enthusiasm. There was a very well-timed fall at the end, which excited everyone. One piece of feedback the judges gave was that their routine had a “great story,” but I personally didn’t know there was a narrative at all.
The second team was the RhythM Tap Ensemble, a student run tap dance group. They choreograph their own routines, which is no small feat. They have a show on January 15 at the Power Center, as well! The beginning of their performance was dramatic, with a small portion of the team standing silhouetted. The one note from the judges I agreed with was that the upper body is just as important to focus on as the lower body, even though their genre was tap dance.
Thirdly, and to the extreme excitement of the audience, was Izzat, an all male fusion (hip hop, Bollywood, bhangra) team. The hype was so intense it was difficult to hear the music at first. Izzat had a lot of stunts, like flips in their routine.
Izzat
Their feet would barely even touch the stage, and their enthusiasm was tangible. The team highlighted their skill during tempo changes, which they mirrored with their body language. They spent time dancing on the floor as well, which looked very fluid and synchronized. There was even an old team member in the audience, who knew all the moves and was very vocal about loving his team.
Izzat appreciation
After Izzat was Impact, a small company of female non-dance majors. The first part of their routine was contemporary and showed off the dancers’ flexibility. Their music was a lot slower and emphasized flow. I thought it was cool how they used their entire body when dancing, even their hands and heads.
The second part of their routine definitely had a more confident vibe to it. It seemed more fun and less modest. The judges enjoyed that the team combined different styles of music, which I agree made their performance more memorable.
The fifth team was Flowdom, est. 2015. They are a multicultural hip hop and freestyle group. They wore more grungy, black costumes, which my friend said reminded her of Rocky Horror. They didn’t necessary have a uniform, but their styles all matched. The team was initially rigid like marionettes, dancing to a haunting Nutcracker chime remix. They later broke character for fluidity, which confused me because they lacked a consistent theme. It did, however, make their performance more interesting. The judges called their routine clever, a favorite being a segment in which the protagonist used a team member’s leg as a handle for her jack-in-the-box.
The sixth performance was from Michigan’s premiere all-female Southeast Asian fusion dance team: Michigan TAAL. Their team wanted to emphasize the importance of both strength and femininity. Their black costume’s matched Izzat’s. They used their hands a lot, which was a nice change. The team was very confident in their routine, and their ending was a synchronized point to the sky. The judges approved of their smooth transitions.
Taal
The final team was EnCore, another audience favorite. They initially came onstage wearing baseball caps and jeans but promptly threw their hats off their heads. There was a team member who did the splits… while wearing jeans. They were clearly a well-established team and are very comfortable with one another, which made their energy incredible. They even did a mannequin challenge in the middle of their routine, which caused the audience to erupt. The judges enjoyed their pose uniformity.
EnCore
The winning team was Michigan Izzat, with EnCore coming in second and Flowdom in third.
I arrived early to the museum, and I watched the people slowly drift in, until all at once the chairs were filled and people were standing around the edges of the room. From the front of UMMA’s apse, it looked like any other performance, yet the back of the room resembled a concert pit; people standing, craning to catch a glimpse of what’s going on, resigning themselves to peering between heads. The performance, Image in Motion, attracted a diverse audience; there were groups of students to parents to faculty. The dances were choreographed by students themselves. As they were inspired by UMMA’s collection Europe on Paper, which consists heavily of line drawings (which were described as very graphic by the museum guide), I was interested to see how the dancers would interpret the art. I chatted with the girl sitting next to me as we waited for the performance to begin, and she expressed her worries that she would not understand what was going on in the dances, having not seen the art. Once the show began, though, it became evident that – had we not known the source of inspiration – it could’ve assumed this was another “dance for dance’s sake” show. While the dancers themselves likely saw the ties between movement and art, in my eyes they were two separate things.
I came to the unfortunate realization that not everything I love, when combined, becomes better. For me, art and dance seem to exist in two separate hemispheres; both forms of art, yet there is not a direct correlation. Separate, though, I loved both. I commend anyone who is willing to put their art and talent up for display, to make themselves vulnerable to an audience. The first couple of dances were costumed in nude colors, embodying the Greek statues situated behind them in the space. The dancers themselves, though embodying a completely different collection of art, came to embody the statuary, giving the solitary figures breath, movement, and life. Many dancers chose to highlight the color red, pulling the inspiration from the prints. I enjoyed that, while the focus of the performance was dance, they did not shy away from involving the audience’s other senses. Some dancers spoke during the dance, or used breathing as a form of accompaniment in itself; one performance studied the interplay between a solo French horn player and a dancer, this specific piece causing me to question which performer was inspired by which? Before this last piece began, the audience was asked to stand and rearrange themselves in the back of the apse, creating a circle around the room. I loved this; I felt as though I was in the piece itself, and it caused the audience to rethink the classic mode of watching a performance.
While Image in Motion intended to explore the relationship between art prints and dance, the relationships between the dancers and the space and the accompaniment was much more dynamic. One of the most meaningful moments of the night was when a member of the dance faculty, preluding the show, discussed the current tensions and fears within today’s recent culture, and how dance and art serves as a means of expressing and strengthening oneself in the midst of outside turmoil.
If you’re an indecisive appreciator of art, or an enthusiast of all forms, the upcoming SMTD@UMMA performance, Image in Motion, is for you. In this collaboration between the Department of Dance and the University of Michigan Museum of Art, U-M Dance students will use UMMA’s new exhibit Europe on Paper as inspiration for the performance. The Europe on Paper collection features the work of German and Austrian Expressionist painters; dancers will interpret the works’ emotion and color through movement.
These two artistic modes lie close to my heart, and based on past STMD@UMMA performances, the beauty of UMMA’s gallery space only further brings SMTD work to life. This marriage of artistic forms is happening Thursday, November 17 at 7:30 in UMMA, and is free and open to the public.
