Images highlights campus talents

By Emily Bjorklund

Images is more than its name implies. The annual showcase is the biggest dance production of the year, and is the product of months of rehearsal, hard work and artistic talent toward presenting the final show.

The event allows dance students to perform what they have been working on since fall quarter. The show consists of four pieces choreographed by professors and four student pieces chosen from fall's Choreographer's Gallery.

Images director Fran Atlas-Lara considers it a huge honor for a student's pieces to be chosen for Images, as well as an honor to even be apart of the program as over 100 major and non-major students audition for the dance concert.

The piece Atlas-Lara choreographed is called "The Primal Pulse." Although it is considered a jazz piece, it incorporates Afro-Haitian movement, lyrical dance, techno beats and the use of bamboo poles for props. She considers this amalgamation of forms to be the right fusion for a fun, upbeat performance unique to Images.

Faculty member David Popalisky's "Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow" conveys the distinctive style of body movement and art through a simple theme of hair loss in his piece. He was inspired by his son's comment on his own thinning hair situation to use it as the light-hearted muse for his work. Popalisky's athletic background as a high school basketball player-turned college dancer is what drew him to dance and inspired the choreography in his piece.

"The body is making choices with design and moving through space," he said.

Popalisky, who co-taught a lab science course this fall called physics of dance, certainly moves beyond the principles of time and energy in his 13-minute piece. His work is full of stylish and bright costumes accompanied by complicated and challenging rhythms in the music selection.

Physics professor Richard Barber, who co-taught the class with Popalisky, makes an entertaining on-stage cameo appearance, involving a razor and a hairbrush, with junior dancer Tara Macken.

"My performance is all about the hair: big, obnoxious, tangled hair," Macken said.

Macken is performing in two pieces, which require demanding rehearsal times twice a week for over two hours per dance.

"Many Santa Clara students do not realize how invested dance majors are into their dance, both through time and emotion," senior performer Misha Patel said. "The dance department is different from any other because our day does not end in the classroom, we have rehearsals until 10:30 at night."

Despite the taxing commitment, Patel says she will miss Images, as this is her last year performing. She says that this year was a unique Images for her because she got to work with Atlas-Lara and guest faculty choreographer Abigail Hosein, two choreographers with whom she had never worked.

"Even though Images always has something to offer for everyone, from ballet to jazz to modern, I am particularly excited to get to work with new styles, especially Abigail's piece," she said.

Hosein's piece, "Hazy Daze/New England," is "very different and fun, and almost trippy," junior dancer Kelsey Richardson said.

The variety offered in the dances at Images is what makes the program innovative and exciting each year, or what Popalisky considers "commitment to something fresh. The dancers give themselves to something totally brand new and open for interpretation."

The dancers Popalisky speak of agree that, as Patel said, "we have complete ownership of this project and ownership of an art form."

The dance faculty encourages all Santa Clara students to come and watch members of the student body participate in part of the Santa Clara dance tradition. Atlas-Lara considers Images a good place to start for a student who has never seen a performance or has never experienced a dance concert setting. She said that even though the dances range in style, principle, music and themes that they are all upbeat and exciting to watch.

There are four Images performances, beginning Thursday at 8 p.m., followed by Friday and Saturday night performances and a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. All shows take place at Mayer Theatre. Tickets are $5 for students and $10 for faculty.

* Contact Emily Bjorklund at (408) 554-4546 or ebjorklund@scu.edu.