For the first time in years, CSUDH dance majors present their senior project at the University Theater.
By Katherine Quezada, Staff Reporter.
The student spring dance concert, this year titled “Lemniscate,” took place at the University Theater stage from May 4-7. The concert’s theme for this year reflected the stories of each student choreographer and the obstacles and victories endured throughout their educational journeys at CSUDH.
Named after the geometric curves of a lemniscate, resembling an infinite symbol, the show represents how, “both origin and destination converge at the center—creating a place for a fateful meeting—before traversing onward,” according to the show’s official press release on the CSUDH website.
Every year, the dance concert is a performing arts show where CSUDH dance students have the creative liberty to choose their own concept, choreography, and music, as well as select dancers to compose an original choreographic piece. These numerous pieces choreographed by different graduating seniors, with the guidance of professors and the artistic director, are then scheduled to premiere and present at the dance concert.
It’s a culminating event for many dance majors, where they are given the opportunity to perform for an entire weekend before officially completing their time as students at CSUDH.
“This concert is special because last year our concert was live streamed, the year before that it was canceled. The year before that our university theater was under renovation moving us over to CSU Long Beach, so our community finally gets to do what we’ve been missing for several years in a row now,” Artistic Director, Amy Michele Allen, said.
The University Theater was closed down in 2018 indefinitely due to safety concerns when the building wasn’t up to code. Many student productions were paused, forcing CSUDH to find an alternative location for productions to proceed.
The University Theater reopened in 2019, and students, now, get to celebrate their creative work at CSUDH’s theater.
Graduating dance major students are given the invitation to be a part of the spring dance concert every year and, with more availability, the opportunity was open for other undergraduate dance students this spring semester.
“It’s nice seeing the dances evolve. It starts off with an idea that really only exists in that students’ head but as they work on it, I see it come to life. It’s nice to see something basically not exist and now fully exist,” Allen said.
This year, the senior choreographers were Alyssa Casas, Kristal Duran, Britney Ewig, Evelyn Javana, Zi Liang, Asia Quick, and Kailey Tomas, who took a heavy emphasis on Jazz dance with their works, which isn’t always seen in previous years, shared Allen.
“The inexperienced audience member won’t find themselves kind of lost or confused, many of the dances people will see are going to feature music that they’ve heard of and even costumes and dances that they’ve seen in other realms online and music videos. Then there will be other dances that not everyone may have seen. It offers both things to audience members,” Allen said.