Rise above the rest: SE students selected to choreograph Fall for Dance

Through onstage "splashes" and the sound of marimbas, Southeast Missouri State University student choreographers Rachel Christophe and Alice Anders are adding their own ballet charm to this year's Fall for Dance concert.

The multiday concert continues through Sunday at the Southeast River Campus and features a collection of different student and faculty works, including a piece by guest choreographer Kristopher Estes-Brown.

Southeast senior Christophe described her 7-dancer piece as modern contemporary with the "essence of freedom" combined with a "feel-good movement."

"With the group of dancers I was able to cast, I felt like it was going to be a good fit," she said of her 6-minute piece, "Tides of Euphoria," adding the piece exudes "pure joy and happiness."

Anders, a sophomore, said Southeast professor of dance Hilary Peterson first contacted her in August to choreograph a marimba concert in collaboration with Southeast music faculty member Christopher Wilson. That's where her idea for the 1-dancer routine for Fall for Dance originated.

TYLER GRAEF ~ tgraef@semissourian.com Students, performers and coreographers Alice Anders, front, and Rachel Christophe are seen during warm-up exercises before a dress rehearsal for Fall for Dance Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019, at the Southeast Missouri State University River Campus.

It took one hour to construct the piece, Anders said. And because it's performed with live music, she described it as being "a relationship between the solo dancer and the musician."

Christophe said she is "very music driven" while creating a routine, which allows her to be confident in her abilities to "play with" rhythms and music qualities.

"Usually, with choreography, I like to prepare a lot ahead of time," Christophe said. "But this one was more of a mix; I had a lot of spatial patterns in my head, and I waited until I was in rehearsal with the dancers to set the movement."

Comparing her piece to "Singing in the Rain," Christophe said her dancers "splash puddles" and "kick puddles" to evoke emotion. "They're rippling through their body, so there's that watery feel."

Anders' 4-minute piece "Spiralization" sits midway in the concert's program lineup and was tackled differently than "Tides of Euphoria."

"I approached it as what felt good to this music. I did not exactly pick this music; I was assigned this music," Anders said.

"I put on my video camera and recorded myself dancing to it, and that's what I taught [my dancer]," she said with a grin. It's not what she usually does at all, Anders said, "but that's just kind of what happened."

With no overlying Fall for Dance theme, Christophe said she and Anders' pieces still coincide with the rest of the "ebb and flow" in the concert.

"The fact that we've had so many rehearsals and my dancer is very persistent about what she can do to make it better, I just don't know what to tell her half the time," Anders said of her piece.

As for struggles, Christophe pinpointed one she's had to overcome: working with a costume and lighting designer. After creating choreography for her piece, Christophe said she discovered it was difficult to "clean up" minuscule details of the routine.

"I didn't want to take out the 'free quality' of it," she said.

Anders said she isn't nervous about the concert, but "I just don't know how else to help my dancer. It looks good to me. There are other aspects of the show I am more on-edge about, but this isn't one of them," she said.

Christophe, though confident, said her piece is "going to be what it is."

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