Fieldston Dance

A glimpse of the past and a preview of the future will be presented by former and current members of the Fieldson dance community. “A Celebration of Dance at Fieldston” has been an event years in the making by Ava Heller and Robert O’Neill. It was an idea that was thought up some years ago with the aspiration to share the art that has been created on Fieldston’s campus in the last decade. They wanted to share this art not only with the current Fieldston community but also with those who have graduated from it.

 This project would allow current dance students to learn from those who were once in their exact place, for alumni to revisit this special time of their lives, and for both to learn and grow from each other. Fieldston dance alumni members were offered many exciting ways that they could get involved in the show and many of them took the opportunity.

Let me now share with you a few of the different ways that alumni were encouraged to participate. One opportunity that stood out to me was the following: dancers who had graduated over the past ten years were contacted and asked to think about a performance that had stuck with them. They were encouraged to take a dive into that spring dance performance archives and search for a dance that they had either choreographed or performed. Those who felt inclined picked either a group or solo dance that had once moved them and continues to today. Those few dances that were chosen to be re-shown will be presented at the show on Friday and Saturday night.

Many members of the Fieldston Dance community have gone on to dance in their adult life. Whether they have become professional dancers, dance majors in college, or simply just continued to take dance classes, several have continued to study the art. Because of this, Ava and Rob wanted to offer a space during the show where alumni could submit any works of dance that they have been a part of post-Fieldston. The two of them wanted to highlight that many former Fieldston students have continued dancing after high school – even if they didn’t go on to major in it. Many of the alumni that were contacted loved the idea of sharing their current work and those who submitted work will be featured in the show on Friday and Saturday.

One of the main hopes for this show was to connect current middle and high school dancers with graduated dancers. There is one project that stuck out to me that accomplished this goal.

 One alum, Sophia Attebery, studied the art of filming and capturing dance while in college. Together, Ave and Sophia developed a brand new program for Fielsoton’s 8th-grade dance company. Sophia helped create prompts that could inspire choreography which Ava and the students then choreographed and learned. They landed on a “student generated”  theme which portrayed the feeling of re-integrating the community post-pandemic. 

Sophia was involved in this process, and her main role in the project was to help students understand the role that film plays in the process of capturing dance. She taught these current middle school students the most effective way they could do this using their smart-phones at home. To conclude her contribution to the project, she then walked them through the editing process. 

Sophia uses advanced film editing software for her personal work and she graciously shared this with our middle school students. From home, she would share her screen, and each student would then explain to her the edits that they wanted to be done to their videos. On her end, she would show the students how her editing program would achieve that. Her role was to lead these students through the “storyboarding” process of making a dance film. She taught them how to effectively relay the beginning, middle, and end of a dance and showed them the power film editing can have on that story.

 This exciting new project – featuring the 8th Grade Dance Company – will premiere the night of the show!

Leaving the middle school community, we enter the 9th-grade class, who have been working on solos this year. Rob and Ava came up with an amazing collaborative idea where 9th-grade students could  “gift” a solo to an alum. The job for these alumns was to then create a response, through movement, to the solo. These solo and response pieces have a strong relationship to each other. Each relationship is unique and they all build off of and communicate with each other beautifully. There are four pairings of these “Gift and Response” pieces and each will be shown on Friday and Saturday!

There are a couple of other high school pieces in the works for showings on Friday and Saturday that will be a fun surprise! 

This celebration will showcase work and collaboration with alumni from as early as 2013. In order by year of graduation, here are those involved: Ally Lehman ‘13, Daniella Sutton ’15, Gillian Nissenbaum ’15, Arianna Ruiz ’16, Celeste Piazza ‘16, Isabel Sung ‘16,     Mark Anthony Graham ’16,  Nyla Thompson ’16, Sophia Attebery ’16, Yurema Perez-Hinojosa ‘16, Ally So ‘17, Katrina Meyer ‘17, Michaele Freeman ’17, Olivia Gonzalez ’17, Kaya West-Uzoigwe ‘17, Rachel Osei-Owusu ’17, Shantel Sosa ‘17, Sonja O’Brien ’17, Taiya Sharif  ’17,  Nami Nitta ’18, Stephanie Baez ’18, Zoe Antell ’18, Lily Heiman ’19,  Nyilah Moreno ’20.

Every dancer involved in this show has worked extremely hard to pull this off in such unprecedented circumstances. Learning to dance online, teaching dance, film, and editing all through a virtual classroom is not easy work. Each and every middle schooler, high schooler, faculty member, alumni, and everyone else involved has given it their all. 

The nights Friday the 4th and Saturday the 5th we will gather, virtually, to celebrate their achievements. If you can, please come out and support!