Spring Concert: Dancing into MSU’s Spotlight
Minnesota State is known for its sports, academics, diverse student body and of course, its iconic theater magic.
However, within the theater department, a certain aspect is sometimes overlooked: dance. Despite this year’s theater season being over, students have the chance to see the Ted Paul Theatre’s curtains rise one last time and witness the dance department’s annual Spring Dance Concert.
After weeks of endless rehearsals, students and dance faculty will come together for this exhilarating performance and dance their hearts out to a wide range of dances including hip-hop and ballet, showcasing a semester’s worth of work from all of MSU’s student dancers.
For this performance, various faculty members, including artistic directors Daniel Stark and Yukina Sato, will present their own pieces with students who auditioned for places in the spring concert’s faculty section.
In addition to several guest dancers making appearances such as alumnae Parisha Rajbhandari, two student pieces were selected for the faculty section, one of those students being sophomore Davaughn Lane.
Lane’s history with dance has been very family oriented, from performing for friends and family to doing praise dancing in church his whole childhood. Attending MSU turned into entering a different world for Lane as his dancing experience in reality came from being self-taught unlike others training professionally in a proper studio.
“I really was a self taught learner in dance. I danced on social media. I never was in a studio. I did show choir in high school, so that was dancing too, but it was never like an actual dance competition dance studio,” Lane said. “I came in with no experience, technique wise, but as a performer, I have that and I still care that I’ve grown so much over the past years, which is amazing.”
With hip-hop being his forte and discovering his interest in jazz by experimenting its various subgenres, Lane was able to create and choreograph his jazz hip-hop piece that has been casted with 12 dancers and will be utilizing the songs “Breaking Dishes” by Rihanna and “Crazy” by Doechii.
“The concept of it is breaking dishes. It comes from men calling women crazy. There’s not really a story with it, but this is the theme of the dance. So basically men calling women crazy and thinking they’re crazy, thinking they’re overreacting when the man is obviously in the wrong. So the first section is ‘Breaking Dishes’. It’s a jazz; they’re really giving a diva style, like ‘You want to play with me, but you know who I am.’ type of vibe,” Lane said.
“In the middle of that, I have the sound of dishes breaking, and now the dances are the dishes. So I did flopping on the floor, or whatever the case may be. And that leads into the next song, ‘Crazy’ by Doechii. So the meaning for ‘Crazy’ is like, ‘Okay, you want to call me crazy. I’m gonna show you crazy.’ This is where the hip hop aggressive movements, like voguing, whacking, comes in.”
Along with Cadence Brown, whose piece was also selected, Lane was able to assist in the outline of the concert and auditions along with spending an immense amount of time rehearsing for not only his piece but also for Stark’s and Rajbhandari’s. After weeks of dedication and hard work, Lane is content in having rehearsals come to a close and being able to finally present his piece on stage.
“I was literally on the phone with my dad yesterday, and I was like, ‘I can’t wait for people to see my dance,” Lane said. “Like ‘I’m so excited, feeling so good.’ So it’s adrenaline that’s building up from rehearsals, because you’re like, ‘This one looks so good.’ Then you get there, you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re here.’ I’m super excited, honestly.”
Being able to present a semester’s worth of work also allowed Lane to explain how the dance concert greatly reflects the souls of the students and was able to help everyone form their own community of dance.
“It definitely talks about the soul of our dance community, because it can be competitive sometimes, but we always have each other’s back, whether somebody gets injured or going through a hard time, anything, we have each other’s back regardless,” Lane said.
“We make sure that each of us are helping each other grow. We love growth. That’s all we talk about. There’s things that I’ve grown in, there’s things that people that I know have grown in, and we acknowledge that, because I feel like that’s important for a dancer.”
Lane shares what audiences can expect for this year’s spring dance concert.
“They can expect to see some weirdness, happiness, aggression, crazy, because of my piece. Some laughs, some funny, and some throwbacks. Passion, really just joy,” Lane said. “I think they’ll just feel mixed emotions. It’s not going to be a stagnant show. I feel it’s going to be a show that takes you to different places, it makes you think about different things.”
The Spring Dance Concert runs May 1-3 in the Ted Paul Theater at the Earley Center for Performing Arts. Tickets can be purchased at MSUTheatre.com or the box office located in the lobby of the Performing Arts Center. Tickets for MSU students are $5.
Photo Caption: MSU’s Theater and Dance department presents its Spring Dance Concert, which will showcase dances from students, faculty, and alumni. (Troy Yang/The Reporter)
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