Spring Into Dance brings live music, new challenges to this year's show

With varied dance styles and guest artists, this year’s Southeast Missouri State University’s Spring Into Dance will stand apart from the rest, according to Hilary Peterson, associate professor and coordinator of dance.

Peterson said live music by the Southeast Wind Symphony will give the show a twist that hasn’t been experienced since 2011.

“The dancers get to perform to live music, which doesn’t happen very often,” she said.

The departments, after much discussion, decided to collaborate again after eight years, Peterson.

“It’s time,” she said of the partnership.

The four-day event also serves as the 100th birthday celebration of Leonard Bernstein, composer of some of the presented pieces, Peterson said.

The performance also will feature dancers from The Ruth Page School of Dance in Chicago.

Two soloists from the school performed at Spring Into Dance last year, she said, and this year there will be a group of nine dancers from the school. The guest dancers will present the show’s two larger works.

The school’s Ruth Page Civic Ballet is a pre-professional ballet company that strives to “bridge the gap” between high school dancers and dancers who work with professional ballet companies, Peterson explained.

The work of internationally recognized choreographer Autumn Eckman — who has 20 years experience as a professional dancer — also will be featured during the concert, Peterson said.

Peterson said Eckman’s piece “You Go I Go” was created specifically for the dancers at Southeast. Southeast freshmen and dance majors Bailey Bremer and J’Nae Howard will collaborate to perform the piece.

“It’s the work that’s strong, but it’s also the dancing that’s strong,” Peterson said of the students.

Bremer — also concert soloist and aerialist — said rehearsing for the show has produced “a lot of pressure.”

For the aerial piece, she described it as “new and exciting,” referencing the silks component, which she had never experienced before. But working with the silks and trying to polish entrances for things to happen on time, she said, was an obstacle.

“It always doesn’t go right,” Bremer said. “You have to feel the music differently than dance, where you have to do everything on a count.”

Howard said her responsibility as a dancer has increased this semester, because of being outside of her comfort zone.

She performs as part of a four-person, 9-minute ballet piece, even though she doesn’t consider ballet her strongest ability, Howard said.

“It’s a small group; everyone is on stage at once. And you don’t get a lot of resting time,” Howard said.

And the audience can see everything, she said, which is “a little stressful.”

“As a performer, you have to find moments where you can be seen as an individual, but also blend as an ensemble,” she said.

Spring Into Dance performances will be at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through April 6 and 2 p.m. April 7 at Bedell Performance Hall on the River Campus. More information can be found online at www.rivercampus.org.

jhartwig@semissourian,com

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