Finally cooling down after two weeks of frenzy and WAC’ing it for five hours straight, I moseyed over to CFA and settled in to watch the fall 2024 Terpsichore (Terp) showcase. I go every time, every year without fail. I had to miss opening night unfortunately due to the choir concert the day before which I was performing in. But Terp is always one of my little treats at the end of a long term, a sweet morsel of joy to savor as I go through finals.
This Terp was surprisingly one of the slower, more emotional sets – befitting of its title “Soul to Soul.” Pieces like senior Jenna Schweikert’s I’ll see you again and seniors Megan Shafar & Ren Herzog’s Back In My Body, were perfect examples of this, with beautiful, slow choreography that focused heavily on paired duos dancing around each other.
Back In My Body is wonderful, slow, and emotional – with a memorable beginning of half the dancers motionless while the other half dances around them. The piece plays around with the whole stage, having multiple sets of motions and movements occurring throughout, asynchronous with the other pairs. It creates a constant swirling, flowing motion across the stage. Your eye is dragged to every corner and dancer. One of my favorite moments was toward the end where all the dancers linked hands and performed with their hands linked for several movements until finally breaking free of each other only to rejoin one another.
Conversely, I’ll see you again has perhaps one of the more emotional endings, with the entire piece featuring the themes of lost love, as Schweikert writes in the handout. At the end, each pair one after the next collapses into each other in various poses.
Undoubtedly, however, senior Devan Boone’s A Movie I’ve Seen Before holds in its hands the emotional core of the whole show. As Boone describes in the handout, the piece is centered around unrequited love or daydreaming about a love that isn’t matched. The song, paired with it “Ceilings” by Lizzy McAlpine, draws this out from the graceful motions and subtle acting from the dancers, whose movements are slow and well-controlled.
Far too many moments shine for me to point out the best but I will attempt to narrow it down anyway, regardless of hubris to shove something so large into a small box. My favorite shining moment from this piece is when the set repeats the earlier sequence previously used for the chorus of the song, but faster, more desperate, and frantic as the music increases in pace. The other two pairs of dancers fall to the floor at the end, as Boone chases after Schweikert but is unable to make her return to Boone’s side at the end of the piece.
Not all of Terp was so heavy on the heart – there of course was junior Nicole Ruby’s knockout pieces Sit on my THRONE and The Monster behind the Mirror, both of which were phenomenal fast-paced action-packed dances. The Monster behind the Mirror has crazy synchronicity, reminiscent of idol groups with a heavy focus on the inTerplay between each dancer. No performer is on their own for long, and every movement plays off each other.
Sit on my THRONE made me bounce in my seat, both because of Kendrick Lamar’s “HUMBLE”, and the moment when, after the song ends, Ruby continues solo for another minute to “Trendsetter” by Connor Price and Haviah Mighty. Her solo work showed off some seriously impressive breakdancing, with perfect shots timed to the music cues.
Another piece that was a delight to watch was junior Madelyn Pellegrino’s & sophomore Shay O’Connell’s The Unteachables, which was the only duo piece in the whole showcase. Typically Terp’s duo’s pieces have historically been on the more emotional side, but this was pure unadulterated fun. Pellegrino and O’Connell, with backpacks and outfits reminiscent of grade school, dance to a remix of the upbeat “ABC” by Jackson 5, swinging and bouncing around the stage and each other for the whole set. Personally, my favorite part was when the song broke down to drum fills that the two performers acted out on each other.
Overall, it was a fun night. I had a blast watching all my friends perform their hearts out. Every Terp show always serves as a reminder to stick around and wait for the next one. I know admission is free, but I already have next term’s show booked in my mind.
