Seniors explore personal stories in project showcase ‘Narratives’

The students in the world arts and cultures/dance senior projects class faced a major roadblock: finding a title for their showcase. They had to pinpoint a name that would encompass all 17 pieces to be performed.

After weeks of brainstorming and struggling, the students landed on the title “Narratives.”

“To me, what a narrative is, is you are drawing one thread out of an entire fabric and examining it to give you an idea of what the fabric is,” said Dan Froot, the world arts and cultures/dance professor of the senior projects course. “The thread tells you something about the greater fabric it came from, which is our lives.”

Froot said that the students enrolled in the two-quarter long senior projects class have delved deeply into personal topics in order to create these threads, or artistic pieces. The finalized pieces will be presented both Friday and Saturday at the Glorya Kaufman Dance Theater.

The senior projects course is open to graduating fourth-years in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, although the majority of its participants are dance students.

This year’s senior projects class consists of 17 students, Froot said, which is the largest group in at least seven years. He hopes that this is because the curriculum of the world arts and cultures/dance department has recently been refined.

In the senior projects course, a wide range of disciplines are represented, from hip-hop dance to spoken word.

“Someone who is doing a dance that takes in Filipino roots can also speak to someone who is doing an autobiographical experimental film. Those two people can speak to each other on equal ground and that’s really exciting to me,” Froot said.

Even within this diversity, a common ground exists – Froot said that all of the pieces are based on personal stories, thus the root of the title, “Narratives.”

Fourth-year world arts and cultures/dance student Caitlin Estudillo said she believes students chose to take this personal route because the length of the course gave participants time to explore topics that were important to them and to create pieces that did these topics justice.

Estudillo’s dance piece pays homage to her late grandfather who grew up in the Philippines and eventually traveled to America. By combining hip-hop, modern and Filipino folk styles of dance with a projection of text and photos behind her, Estudillo tracks her grandfather’s journey and history.

“Growing up, I lived with my (grandparents) and my family. (My granddad) passed two years ago. So for me, I wanted to do something that was beyond me. It was my own way to really honor him,” Estudillo said.

Fourth-year world arts and cultures/dance student Lindsay Kullmann said her piece focuses on body image issues using a variety of art forms. She and three other women dance and yell, while manipulating pieces of paper that have words relating to the body written on them. Some of these words are negative ones that have been said to them or that they have thought about themselves, like “not strong enough” or “muffin top.” Other words are compliments previously given to them or aspects of their bodies that they have worked hard to embrace.

Kullmann said that the dance community seems especially hard on itself concerning the topic of body image, which she saw at her summer job at the Boston Ballet’s summer intensive training program. Acting as a residential counselor to a group of 15-year-old girls, Kullman said she observed them debating whether to eat the apple or apple skin, depending on which had more calories.

Kullmann said that she and the three other women in her performance have all personally struggled with body image issues, having grown up in the dance community.

“I wanted to do this (piece) here because it seemed like a good opportunity to reclaim the space that developed the body image issue,” Kullmann said.

Attendees of the showcase will watch these and many more performances by the seniors, some of whom are performing for the last time in their undergraduate career. Froot said that the performances will give the audience an accurate insight into the world arts and culture/dance department education.

“The pieces are truly investigations – inquiries into a topic – using their respective artistic media as their mode of inquiry,” Froot said. “I think that is very much what both degrees are looking at.”