The Collegian

Issue date: 2/26/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Liz Essley

Media Credit: William Clayton

Wash tubs, brake drums and the marimba will fill the pit this weekend when Hillsdale College's Tower Dancers and Percussion Ensemble present "Synergia" in Markel Auditorium.
Greek for "collaboration," "Synergia" will showcase a live pairing of music and dance from around the world and original works from the college community.
On a Tuesday night in McNamara Rehersal Hall, golden light floods the wood floors as the marimba peals out warm, syncopated rhythms.
"If music is my inspiration, I always try to listen to it again and again," said Tower Dancer Director and Assistant Professor of Dance Corinne Imberski. "I listen for a fleeting image, for texture of movement."
With a backdrop of cymbals, timpanis and coffee-can-drum sets, dancers move in geometric shapes, angular arms juxtaposed against rounded backs.
With three dances choreographed by dance instructors Corinne Imberski and Holly Hobbs, student choreographers are responsible for two numbers this year - the first time a single student has choreographed her peers.
For senior Lauren Gribble, the chance to choreograph a piece by herself was a chance to combine her Classics major and her love for dancing.
"There are a lot of representations of dance in Greek art," Imberski said. "Dance is a pretty integral part [of Greek life] but we have no idea how those dances looked. We have some ideas - we have some shapes. This is [Lauren's] twist on that - a combination of the ancient and modern, melded nicely with her studies here."
Another student-choreographed piece, "A Work in Progress" is set to senior Rob Ogden's
original composition entitled "A Mechanical Tree."
It's the first student-composed percussion piece to be featured in a concert. Ogden wrote "A Mechanical Tree" last year as a composition exercise and Percussion Ensemble director Eric Jones said he would feature the piece in this year's concert. Jones, laughing as he told the story, said although he forgot about his promise, Ogden didn't.
The three students choreographing it heard a jungle theme in the music and decided to put a modern spin on it.
"We wanted to avoid the typical jungle scene so we opted for the business world instead," senior Vita Reivydas said.
Three women scuffle over a wooden staircase and a simple black briefcase in a piece that examines the struggle to climb the corporate ladder.
"A lot of my choreography [stems from] the desire to break out of the business cycle," said Reivydas. "So a lot of my movement is of frustration. I don't want to leave my audience with bitterness or a lack of hope. The positive spin is that hard work does pay off."
Another dance number is set to Japanese composer Keiko Abe's pieces "Frogs" and "Michi." Initially, Jones said, the dancers had been rehearsing to Abe's "Michi" performed by a professional with a good deal of original improvisation in it. The result, said freshman marimba player Stefan Ahr, was the dance required 13 minutes but the piece as written was only eight minutes long.
Ahr's solution was to splice another piece by Abe in the middle of "Michi" and transition between pieces with enough improvisation to give the dancers time for their choreography.
Ahr explained that he has to watch the dancers for cues to transition from one piece to another, looking for certain movements and choreography.
"It's a great way to integrate and reflect their dancing," Ahr said.
Jones is most excited about the finale of the concert - Lou Harrison's "Concerto for Violin and Percussion." Written in 1940, the piece uses many unusual instruments.
"The Harrison uses a lot of found sound instruments, " Jones said. "I had to build and find a lot of these instruments."
He pointed to a row of coffee cans nailed together to make a drum set, several washtubs, a series of eight or nine brake drums and truck springs for examples.
"Back then they were free," he said.
The piece combines un-tempered, changeable instruments that bring a slightly different sound to each performance with a violin solo that weaves the individual parts together played by senior Sarah Paye.
"Here we are in the percussion orchestra, laying down a nice blanket, a nice groove," said Jones, "and then we have a violin part - the two really complement each other."
Drum rims, flowerpots, gongs - the percussion sounds interrupt each other with metallic edges, all connected by a fluid violin part.
"At some parts the percussion just whispers where the violin sings," Jones said.
Behind his back, dancers dart, crab-like, their individual shapes sometimes harsh and jagged like the sounds of brake drums and lead pipes, but the transition from shape to shape continuous and purposeful like Paye's part.
From student-choreographed and composed numbers, to PVC pipes and wind chimes, Indonesian and Grecian-style shapes and jungle texture, "Synergia" combines music and shapes from different backgrounds and styles.
Senior Sarah Stevens says the biggest thing the different pieces have in common is their unusual sound.
"Each pieces has a very different feel to it," Nelson said, "But I think it will all go together really well."
To Imberski, that's what Synergia is all about.
"It's the idea that the whole is more than the sum of the parts," she said.

TO GET TICKETS:
Tickets are available outside of Saga during lunch or from the Box Office at 517- 607-2848.

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