River Campus Fall for Dance to feature dances from 'Nutcracker Suite'

Dance numbers from Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite" will be featured in this year's Fall for Dance performance beginning Thursday, Nov. 17, at Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus. Running through Sunday, Nov. 20, the annual event will also feature pieces choreographed by SEMO students as well as two professional guest artists.

Hilary Peterson, coordinator of dance and associate professor for SEMO's Conservatory of Theatre and Dance, acted as artistic and rehearsal director for the show and said it was decided to do something a little different this year.

"Usually there's a sense of variety throughout the show, but this year we decided to do Act 1 as more of a contemporary movement, and Act 2 is the second half of 'The Nutcracker Suite'," Peterson said. "Not the whole story, but all the classical ballet dances."

Peterson said The Nutcracker portion of the show was choreographed by SEMO's dance program faculty, one of whom, Alyssa Jones, created an aerial duet on silks for the "Danse Arabe", or Coffee number.

Guest artist Arianna Russ choreographed the opening contemporary piece, called "When the Lightning Strikes", which features a trio of graduating seniors.

"It's a really lovely piece." Peterson said. "It's about being human and growing and changing. I think that's really appropriate and shows a nice amount of technical and performance ability from these three seniors."

Russ is the artistic director of Modern American Dance Company in St. Louis, and was an adjunct professor for the dance program last year.

"The students really responded to Arianna as a person and to her teaching," Peterson said. "So, we asked her to come in and work with these three students and give them a final experience and performance opportunity as seniors."

Emily Haussler, another guest artist, is the artistic and executive director of RESILIENCE Dance Company in St. Louis. She was the choreographer for a piece in the first act, titled "An Inevitable, Undefined You".

"Emily did some really nice work that's a little bit more postmodern in the vein of some of the artists from the 1960s and '70s," Peterson said. "It has this really nice ebb and flow, and progresses through this idea of people being individuals and moving alone, and then at the end they're all coming together as one. It has a lot of nice movement and connection moments between the dancers."

Another number in the first act features three student dancers — one sophomore and two juniors — directed by Madison Diehl, a senior, titled "Power in Numbers". Peterson called it a contemporary jazz piece that pokes fun at being too serious.

"There's some quirky movement in there," Peterson said. "They've got sunglasses on so it's kind of like being too cool for school."

Peterson said this year's Fall for Dance is going to be a great night of dancing, and she is excited for the students to showcase all their hard work.

"We've got a lot of great student dancers and choreographers," Peterson said. "Their sense of creativity and how they think of things, and the experience they're coming in with is really wonderful, so, we're really happy to highlight that."

For ticket information, call the SEMO River Campus box office at (573) 651-2265.