September 04, 2020

DANCE EXTRAVAGANZA 2020

Performances: STREAMED Recordings of Dance Pieces!

Thursday, December 3 @ 7:30pm

Friday, Saturday & Sunday, December 4, 5 & 6 @ 12noon & 7:30pm

A recording of the performance can be viewed HERE
This recording will be available through all of December and January.

Dance Extravaganza, commonly referred to as Dance X, offers students the opportunity to have their choreography fully staged and seen by large audiences. This year, the choreography will be filmed, then streamed, and it is our hope that this will give more opportunities for a wider audience to view the work of our fine choreographers.

The Lewis & Clark College Dance Program believes in empowering students to create and produce dance at the highest possible level. Since its beginning in 1996, over a thousand students have participated in making Dance X what it is today.

Theater Major Emily Stone brainstormed the first Dance Extravaganza 20 years ago as an experimental non-credited theatrical dance performance in the Black Box.  A total of twelve students were collectively the producers, choreographers, performers, costume designers and lighting designers.  The atmosphere was truly circuslike with the overflow of audience members sitting in the catwalks as well as the tech crew doing vaudeville-esque numbers in between the pieces.  After several successful years of sell out runs in the Black Box the show eventually involved faculty and staff and was moved onto the Main Stage.  It is now structured as a course (TH 252 Rehearsal and Performance, Dance) that sequences students through TH 308 (Dance Composition and Improvisation) in preparation to choreograph (499 Independent Study).  Dance X annually showcases the work of five to seven choreographers and has involved up to 80 dancers.

Although the Extravaganza is now formally presented on the Main Stage, we still encourage choreographers to experiment with new ideas and to investigate and invent authentic movement vocabulary.  And this year, we are excited by the new challenge to create dance on film!  Student choreographers are encouraged to combine skills they develop in class with their own aesthetic sensibility. We invite those students with a high level of training and technical ability and those students with no training or performance experience to audition.  I applaud the fine work of our choreographers and performers as well as all the artists’ and technicians’ efforts that occur behind the scenes.

~Susan E. Davis, Dance Program Head

QUESTIONS: theatre@lclark.edu