2024 Dance M.F.A. Thesis Concert: an Impractical Idea

NORTHAMPTON, MA — The Smith College Department of Dance presents the 2024 Dance M.F.A. Thesis Concert: an Impractical Idea featuring choreography by 2nd year M.F.A. candidates Francesca Baron, Laura David, Gabrielle Revlock, and Madelyn Sher. Performances will take place on February 8, 9, and 10 at 8 p.m. in Theatre 14 in Smith’s Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets available online at smitharts.booktix.com. 

This year’s M.F.A. Concert includes four contemporary dance works that explode with color, humor, imagination, and celebration, featuring a piano, a disco ball, the human voice, a bubble machine, several rolls of tape, and some golden vacuum cleaners. Each piece offers a new way to look at how we exist together—challenging the audience to reflect on how they play, what they remember, how they assign meaning, and what limits they put on their imaginations.

Francesca Baron (she/her) established herself as a free-lance choreographer and performer in Chicago upon graduating from Lindenwood University with B.A. degrees in dance and psychology. Her contemporary piece, Con petire, follows a group of seven dancers as they explore play aesthetics and imagination on an individual and collective level. With the proscenium stage as their playground, the dancers incorporate tape as a tool, examining how it can alter one’s engagement with the present moment. “Con petire means “to search together” and it stems from the latin root of the word compete,” explains Baron. “The aim of this work is not to define play but rather highlight the inner landscape of what play can be.” Recognizing that the body can inhabit many states of being, Baron’s work pushes the boundaries of kinetic movement.

Laura P. David (they/she) is a Chicago-based maker, mover, and educator who seeks to empower others through their work. Since getting their B.A. with the Dance Prize from Kenyon College, Laura has worked as a dance instructor, therapeutic assistant, paraprofessional, and middle school teacher. Their contemporary dance theatre piece Hushed is a surreal exploration of vocalizing as a physical act alongside movement. The piece utilizes bright colors and glittering lights to evoke a realm where expression is boundless and imagination is limitless. Laura hopes the work will provide audiences with a sense of lightness and joy and encourages them to “entertain the idea that the piece is about exactly whatever you need it to be.” 

Gabrielle Revlock (she/they) is a performer, choreographer, improviser, and creator of Restorative Contact, a mindful partner movement practice. Prior to Smith she was based in New York City and Philadelphia. Her choreographic work depicts complicated but relatable interpersonal relationships developed through meticulous character study and improvisational structures. Revlock isolates and contrasts specific moods, themes, behaviors, and visual ideas to create moments of absurdity, joy, humor, and compassion. Her postmodern piece, Vacuwunderous, is performed by a multi-generational cast of student and professional dancers spanning a 50-year age range. The work investigates the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious, the stage and the backstage. Revlock poses the question, “When a dancer exits the stage do they exit our consciousness or might we be able to hold onto awareness of and curiosity about what is just out of sight?”

Madelyn Sher (she/her) is a multidisciplinary performing artist, choreographer, and educator from New York City. Her work is influenced by a diverse background of formal training, a passion for metaphor, and a fascination with feeling. Until We Forget is an autobiographical dance theater piece composed of bedtime stories and romantic tangents, including a poignant story about her great-grandfather. In this illustration of memory, love, and loss, Sher plays with the relationship between language, imagination, and movement. She hopes the audience will be “moved to consider the presence of their family's past, and how memories solidify and transform in their retellings”.

At a Glance

February 8, 9, 10 at 8 p.m.
Theatre 14 

Dance M.F.A. Thesis Concert: an Impractical Idea
Tickets: $5–10 at smitharts.booktix.com. 

The Smith College Department of Dance presents the Dance M.F.A. Thesis Concert: an Impractical Idea featuring original choreography by 2nd year M.F.A. candidates Francesca Baron, Laura P. David, Gabrielle Revlock, and Madelyn Sher.