Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025 marked opening night for the 2025 Senior Dance Concert entitled “In Our Nature.” The concert took place in the Center for Art and Dance (CAD) and featured choreography from this year’s senior dancers, including: Alice Boerner ’26, Jade Burbank ’26, Ariel Edwards ’26, Janet Munoz Enriquez ’26, Hailey Frank ’26, Nina Hodder ’26, Joy Meyers ’26, Emily Sanchez ’26, Leo Sanchez ’26, Emma Smith ’26, Sophie Smith ’26, Kathryn Sprandel ’26, Mary Staplin ’26, and Liya Wetzler ’26.
Many of the pieces featured unconventional elements one might not expect to see in a dance concert, including live musicians in “WineSkin” performed by Edwards, confetti in “Waltz of the Fairies” choreographed by Wetzler, nostalgic home movies in “debajo el sol, florecerás” choreographed by Sanchez, and audience participation in “Gay Patriot” choreographed by April Sellers, an off campus collaborator who in collaboration with Frank helped bring this piece to life. “Gay Patriot” stood out to the audience for its unconventional form and the improvised elements of the piece. The program notes explain, “A defining element of ‘Gay Patriot’ is the integration of improvisation within a structured framework. While the movement vocabulary and emotional arc are carefully crafted, each performance is uniquely shaped by the dancer’s spontaneous generation of text, drawn from set prompts.”
Thematically, many of the pieces felt reflective of each dancer’s journey to this point. The choreography gave the audience glimpses of nostalgia, the process of creation, and the challenges they’ve faced along the way. The program notes for “Center of Movement,” choreographed and performed by Burbank, state, “Movement is a part of a dancer’s inherent nature. It centers and guides the dancer navigating life’s movement, conquering challenges with the comfort of rehearsed material that appears as a performance.” The location added to the overall meaning of the concert as well, taking place in CAD, one of the studios where the dancers have had classes and rehearsals for the past three and a half years.
Watching the graduating seniors take their bows at the end of the show was a very moving experience.
