Comradery in Fourth-Year Dance Majors’ Final Bow

Palm Court was abuzz Feb. 21 as family and friends of four fourth-years filed into the make-shift theater. They gathered to support the students displays in the Dance Senior Solo Showcase —  one of the students’ final performances as pupils in Loyola’s dance department.

This performance works as the senior capestone project exclusive to dance majors. Dancers in this course are tasked months in advance with finding choreographers in the Chicago area to work with them in developing solos, which are performed every February. 

Before dancers took to the stage, Artistic Director of the performance and Senior Dance Lecturer Sarah Cullen Fuller gave touching remarks about her time with the dancers and her hopes for their future. In directing this performance, Fuller worked to highlight the intersectionality dance with core Jesuit values at the center of every students’ liberal arts education at Loyola.

Fuller said the setting of the showcase in the glass-walled atrium was an intentional choice. Rather than being swept up in the grandeur of a typical stage performance, the natural light peering in and reflecting off coordinated all-white costumes set a welcoming tone for the show.

First to perform was fourth-year dance major Amber Stephenson, strutting to the back of the stage in white cowboy boots, fringe pants and air of quiet confidence — as if she owned the room. 

She wordlessly asked each audience member to become part of her performance, even handing off her cowboy hat as she balanced a care-free attitude fit for the Wild West. Under the easy-going facade, an inner turmoil brewed as contracted movements replaced a motif of gentle swaying as though Stephenson was trying to guard herself from an unseen force.

By the end of the piece, Stephenson seemed to have undergone a metamorphosis as she traded the white boots for a light pink pair pre-set on the stage, a possible metaphor in acceptance of treading a new path, as she will do upon graduation in May. 

Cristina Guzman, a fourth-year dance major, performed her solo next, radiating joy with every step. She presented a pillow-soft fluidity which brought ease and stability to the piece. Guzman complimented the lighter movements in her arms with visually captivating and grounding floor work.

The dynamic, angular shapes Guzman created with her body wouldn’t typically be associated with grace, but became the picture of it with thoughtful execution. From the second the music started, the jubilation at the piece’s core served as a reminder of the powerful ability art has in giving its viewers an escape from the stressors of life, even if only for a few minutes.

In contrast to the delicacy of Guzman’s piece, the fourth-year dance major Laine Dunn brought the audience on a roller coaster of emotions. Set to a remix of Billy Joel’s “Vienna” and “The Butcher” by Radiohead, Dunn gave a cinematic performance exceptional in both technique and artistry. 

Dunn had a phenomenal ability to portray a wide range of facial expressions, a talent taken full advantage of by their choreographer, Maria Blanco. 

During sections of the piece in which Dunn expresses guttural despair, their body language and facials portray a scream so raw the sound they would’ve produced could be imagined, making the moment all the more powerful as no sound — other than the slight huffs of breath — was allowed to escape.

Yet, they were able to break tension through simplistic, amusing gestures, bringing the audience to giggle in a piece which was anything but comical. 

The final solo of the afternoon was performed by fourth-year dance and advertising/public relations double major Kara Hoag. Whether coincidental or planned, Hoag started her piece with similar steps to those Dunn concluded their piece with, making both flow together in a seamless narrative.

Hoag built on the complex emotion brought up in Dunn’s through the expansiveness of her upper body work. Thematic movements of reaching recurred throughout the dance, oozing with vulnerability and inviting the audience to enter a deeply intimate aspect of her personhood.

Enveloped in the story Hoag was crafting, a collective breath was held when she stood completely still and stared into the eyes of one of the audience members. The silence was only broken when Hoag extended her gaze and a hand to the rest, pulling each of them back into the narrative they were spectators to seconds before.

When Hoag settled into her final pose, and the applause died down, the three other dancers circled the audience to commence the final ensemble piece.

While each solo presented themes specific to each dancer, once they joined each other on stage, a comradery they’d built throughout the creative process of this capstone was apparent. 

The dance, set to Cameron Winter’s “Love Takes Miles,” echoed the love each had for the others and their art form as they leaned on each other and trusted the others to catch them before they could fall. 

The smiles they donned exuded their excitement to have the opportunity to give one of their final performances as Loyola students to those who’d been there to support them along the way. 

The first of two showings of the Dance Senior Solo Showcase ended with the performers huddled together in a group embrace. When they broke, emotions close to the surface for the dancers was reciprocated throughout the audience as tears started to bud in their eyes, and the fourth-years took their bows.