On March 22 and 23, the Spieker Center will host Menlo’s annual dance concert with three performances over the two days. While the dance concert is an annual event, each year’s performance has a unique focus. The theme of this year’s concert is “innovate.” According to upper school dance teacher Angela Curotto-Pierson, this year’s theme led the dancers to push the boundaries of dance and storytelling through innovative approaches to movement, sound, lighting and video.
“The way we’re creating the pieces, like the process of them, is where we’re showcasing the innovation,” Curotto-Pierson said. From using ChatGPT to generate dance formations to incorporating student-coded LED light strips into costumes, the concert is using technology and unconventional methods to craft its performances.
The concert is divided into four distinct sections, each highlighting a different aspect of innovation. In the movement section, dancers will explore new and unexpected ways of choreographing dances. One of the Knight Life dances specifically experimented with dividing dancers into groups when choreographing. “[Dance teacher Bibi Khalili] had half the group choreograph only arms […] the other half choreographed just feet and then we put them together,” Curotto-Pierson said.
In the sound section, students are creating original music for the dances. Senior Kaavya Baliga, in addition to performing in the concert, composed music for a dance number in her Push Play class.
Video is another focus of the concert, and dancers will interact with projected images and videos to enhance their movements.
The last section of the concert is lighting. “We’re going to experiment with different spotlights and different colored lights,” senior Tate Lee, co-captain of the team, said.
After the Friday show, there will be a 10-15 minute information and question session where attendees can ask questions and learn more about how the theme was incorporated into the creative process. “My hope is that after seeing the title of the show, seeing the program and watching the pieces, the takeaway is that you can tell that something is different about the intention of the pieces or something was different with creating it,” Curotto-Pierson said.
According to Lee, focusing on innovation has made the process more difficult. “One of my pieces involves light, so we’re basically creating choreography that relies on the lights […] so we’re almost like working backwards, which has been fun, but it’s also been time- onsuming,” Lee said.
Lee also stated that different elements will need a lot of experimentation during tech week. “The whole idea of the show was like we’d be innovative in different ways, so that means merging dance and technology,” Lee said.
