By Siera Schubach, Staff Writer

Published in print Sept. 27, 2014

UNCG alums gathered on Friday night to perform a series of work by modern dance choreographers Jan Van Dyke and John Gamble. Retired professors from the university Dr. Van Dyke and Mr. Gamble shared their evening with featured artist E.E. Balcos, a professor at UNC-Charlotte.

The evening featured four dances, three by Van Dyke and the last, a new piece by Gamble. “It’s been like a retrospective for me,” mused Van Dyke.

All three of her pieces presented Friday were older choreographies, dances she revisited specifically for this event. “These dances still hold my interest after all these years and all seem to speak to the world as I am experiencing it”.

All three of Van Dyke’s dances were choreographed 20 to 30 years ago and even featured some of the original cast, members of Van Dyke’s dance group. “All dancers except our guest artist, E.E. Balcos, are UNCG alums with professional careers here in the area,” she said. “Some have danced in this group for over 20 years.”

Van Dyke says that she had enjoyed revisiting the dances because “unlike painting or singing, it takes considerable rehearsal time to teach a group of dancers to do a piece, [and] once the performance is over… the dance just disappears”. For the night’s performance, she felt her dances returned to life.

The night also saw the premiere of John Gamble’s piece “Sub-Text”, a reflection on “increasingly brief and ubiquitous forms of communication in the digital age”. Filled with what Mr. Gamble calls movement “bites”, this performance was a rapid succession of actions, accompanied by a soundtrack of cartoon noises and sometimes discordant sounds. The dancers appeared and disappeared from all corners of the stage, moving disjointedly to the odd music, some of the dancers far more engaging than others.

The evening also featured guest artist E.E. Balcos, an accomplished dancer who also serves as Associate Professor of Dance at UNCC. “It has been very enjoyable to get to know [E. E. Balcos], watch him learn and grow in his style, see him bring the character into being,” said Van Dyke.

Featured in only one dance, “Lament” (1984) by Van Dyke, E.E. Balcos brought an immeasurable sense of emotion and power to his performance opposite Kelly Swindell of the Van Dyke Dance Group. With smooth and even movements, E.E. Balcos captured the audience’s attention and stole the show.

Outside of Balcos, the performances, although mostly well executed, lacked a strong sense of emotion or depth. Complex in their meanings, the dances were hard to decipher, a task perhaps the dance students in the audience had an easier time understanding.

In her hopes for what students might gain from this performance Dr. Van Dyke has this to say: “Think about modern dance as a little different from ballet — we are not trying to create spectacle, or show how high we can jump or how many turns were can do. We are trying to use movement to express ideas and feelings in an abstract kind of way. This may be hard to understand. It is not a literal from – otherwise we would be using pantomime”.

Friday evening’s display of modern dance was only one type of art that will be sponsored this season by UNCG’s School of Music, Theatre and Dance.

For more information about upcoming events, please visit http://performingarts.uncg.edu/events/calendar.