On Friday, June 1 long after the hallways of Homestead had emptied out for the weekend, the black box filled up to enjoy “An Evening of Dance” that served to showcase Meg Niedfeldt’s and Renee Schwarz’s, seniors, dance independent studies as well as the presentation of a video from the Theatre Production Seminar’s dance group.

The evening began with two pieces self-choreographed and performed by Niedfeldt. First, there was a hip-hop piece choreographed to a mash-up of artists Cardi B, Drake and BROCKHAMPTON. Second, she performed a more traditional piece to an instrumental track “Planetarium” from the La La Land Soundtrack. “I really wanted to play with he musicality that the song offered,” Niedfeldt said about “Planetarium.”

The evening continued then with a performance by Schwarz about the power of hands performed to a spoken word written by poet Sarah Kay. “I wanted to record my own personal voice to show my interpretation and make it more personal to the movement I created,” Schwarz said.

Then, Schwarz performed a piece about circles while reciting various quotes about what a circle means from various famous writers. “This was my first assignment that Ms.Figg-Franzoi tasked me with,” Schwarz said.

Afterwards, Niedfeldt completed the final three dances she had choreographed: a contemporary-modern hybrid to the song “Coffee” by Sylvan Esso, a fosse style jazz piece to the song “Fever” by Beyoncé and a contemporary dance to the song “Creeks” by Bon Iver.

“It went basically as expected. I knew I was going to be dying halfway through based on the dress rehearsals that I’ve done, but being in front of people performing the dances is different then dancing in front of the mirrors and Figg it was more adrenaline inducing and exciting and brings out something in me that I don’t get when I’m dancing alone.” Niedfeldt said about her performance as a whole.

Following Niedfeldt’s conclusion, Schwarz completed her live performances with a dance choreographed to a spoken word she wrote about the human impact on the environment. Schwarz utilized dirt and a box as a prop in this dance. “I wrote this spoken word for my second trimester final in creative writing. When I first wrote it I thought it would be really interesting to put movement to it so that’s exactly what I did,” Schwarz said.

Overall, “I was a little nervous beforehand but I knew kind of what I was doing and I think it went well based on the amount of time that I put in on it and the amount of pieces that I had… Learning to teach yourself how to do things in itself is a crazy learning experience. Not having a teacher and trusting yourself to do things was a really amazing experience,” Schwarz commented on her performance as a whole.

Finally, the night ended with the viewing of a performance by Bella Gabor, Abby West, juniors, Lauren Hagerty, sophomore, and Schwarz about water that was pre-recorded outside. The girls were in the fifth hour Theatre Production Seminar course and this piece served as one of their final projects. “I wanted to connect with the cycle of life to the cycle of water. Through the process of creating a dance in water we discovered many ways that water can connect to our bodies and emotions, and the way we think,” Gabor said.

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Sasha Shapsis

Meg Niedfeldt, senior, performs a dance piece to the song Planetarium.