First-year students create new work in dance

"Do you have any questions for the group?" asks dance faculty member Susan Sgorbati.

Ruth Nelson '11, a student in First Year Dance Intensive, is sitting in the center of the dance studio. She has just finished performing material for the class—material she created herself, in one of the course's weekly composition assignments. Her classmates lean comfortably, barefoot, along the studio walls, and wait for Ruth's reply.

Ruth thinks for a moment. "What caught your attention?" she asks the group. "And were there any places where you started to get lost?"

"The change of level, the change in dynamics, really caught my attention," offers Lydia Chrisman '12.

Another student chimes in. "You seem to have the ability to change level quickly, and that was really mesmerizing."

"Does this material seem like the beginning of a longer dance," Sgorbati asks, "or something that would go in the middle?"

At its core, First Year Dance Intensive is really an introduction to making new work.

"First Year Dance Intensive" sounds like an introduction to dance—and for some students, it is. But at its core, First Year Dance Intensive is really an introduction to making new work. "Bennington's focus in dance," Sgorbati says, "is really on the creative process and the individual. So part of what this class does is help students develop their own movement language."

What is a movement language? Sgorbati compares the movement vocabulary of a dancer to the style of a writer. Just as a writer may gravitate to certain word choices and sentence structures, a dancer develops his or her own particular language of gestures and movements. "What is each student discovering about the types of movement he or she uses?" Sgorbati says. "Do they use balance? Do they like to use extension? Is there a certain kind of texture, more lyrical or flowing versus something more dynamic or geometric? Everybody's unique, and discovering how you put movement together is an interesting and joyous experience."

By the end of term, each student creates and completes a dance, which they perform at an end-of-term Dance Studio Concert.

As students begin this process of discovery, they also learn to think about structuring their dances from beginning to end. Over the course of the term, students go from the basics—making a phrase, a string of gestures—to generating longer material through their weekly assignments. In these assignments, they're searching for material they'd like to develop into a finished composition. By the end of term, each student creates and completes a two-to-three minute dance, which they perform at an end-of-term Dance Studio Concert.

"In one of our assignments," says Emily Climer '12, "we had to use a piece of imagery, a picture or an object, as a source of ideas for our dance. I started with the image of a leaf unfolding, with these slow, sculptural movements where I'm settling from shape to shape and morphing my own body in the way that a sculptor would morph a shape."

Observations from Sgorbati and the rest of the class guide each student's work. "It's less about judgment," Climer says, "and more about having an outside eye, so you know what's coming across. We've all really grown in expressing what we're seeing, and what thoughts or questions or sensations that raises. And Susan's feedback is incredibly insightful; she sees things you couldn't have articulated yourself." That feedback is now helping Climer as she composes her finished dance. "It opens whole new ways that I could move through the process…. My classmates helped me realize that this movement can go someplace different—it doesn't have to stay with the slow, sculptural thing I was working with at first."

"I've found a way of moving that very much surprised me; I didn't even know I could move like this."

All students who plan to concentrate in dance at Bennington are encouraged to take First Year Dance Intensive, but the class is also open to complete beginners. Says Lydia Chrisman: "I've had a lot of dance training prior to this, and at first I was thinking, ‘Will I be challenged?' Because the levels are really different—you have people in the class who have done ballet since they were three, and people who have never danced before. But through improvisation work and the exercises Susan gives us, it's really interesting how it comes together and doesn't matter anymore. She works in a way where you are challenged because you're working with yourself; you have to make your piece by the end of term.

"I've found a way of moving that very much surprised me; I didn't even know I could move like this," Chrisman says. "It's given me the foundation to really continue. Now I'm excited to see—how far will I go with it? Where will it pull me now?"

Learn more about dance at Bennington.

Read more stories about Bennington College.