Dancers add dimension to “Black and White”

Technical malfunctions and cramped quarters didn’t stop the USC Chamber Ballet Company from putting on a stellar performance Thursday night.

En pointe · The program featured dances to songs by the Beatles and Sufjan Stevens. - Nathaniel Gonzalez | Daily Trojan

When the curtain was pronounced broken mere minutes before the first dancers were set to take the stage — leaving them with no practice floor hidden from the swelling audience in Bovard Auditorium — they did not panic, but simply took to the dressing rooms and stairwells instead.

“The whole event has been incredibly well run, especially since it’s student-directed,” said Jeanmarie Steele, a freshman majoring in civil engineering. “We were able to organize very well.”

The USC Chamber Ballet Company celebrated the culmination of a semester’s worth of effort with its fourth annual spring showcase, “Black and White,” which focused on the dancers’ interpretations of opposition.

While the company was part of a larger fall event in which it collaborated with other dance troupes, the spring production was a chance to spotlight its own choreography and dancers.

This year’s event featured 16 numbers orchestrated and mainly performed by the company’s 19 members. Special guests Jonathan Langley and members of another USC-based group, Alosus Company Dancers, danced in their own pieces, “Simple Dreams” and “Case Study: Women on the Edge,” respectively.

“The format here is very open. If you want to do a solo, you can go do a solo. If you want to just choreograph a piece and not dance in it, that’s fine too. Anyone in the company has the opportunity to dance and choreograph whatever they want,” said Diana Smith, a sophomore majoring in communication and co-director of USC Chamber Ballet.

For many members, that flexibility afforded a unique opportunity to experiment.

“I decided to choreograph ‘Brush on Silk’ for the showcase. I’d never done choreography before this. It was a lot of fun,” said Alison Hom, a freshman majoring in communication.

For this year’s show, the company members chose to incorporate many different styles of dance. Most performances were contemporary, though classical ballet and hip-hop styles shone through.

“When it comes down to it, most choreographers want to add a lot of contemporary [influences],” Hom said.

That wasn’t a problem with “Black and White.”

Interpretations of the theme ranged from Co-Director Kristen Scudder’s soothing “Blackbird” routine, to the captivating-yet-disturbing “Alzheimer’s Children,” choreographed by Smith, to “Werewolf” by Alexa Cohen and Nicole Jaffe which featured a spotlight moon and hair-raising howling.

The four guest dancers from the Alosus Dance Company gave a striking performance to Clint Mansell’s Summer Overture, in which they portrayed demented women suffering as prisoners of the mind.

Though the show’s theme was “Black and White,” the showcase was not bereft of color. Many choreographers interpreted the show’s namesake as a call for the abstraction of tension and contrast rather than a literal need for the title colors.

Natasha Moussouras’ “l’Harmonie” presented dancers in red and blue, and Langley — the only male dancer of the night — performed in a Peter Pan-esque get-up.

“We were really excited about the theme this year” said Scudder, a junior majoring in civil engineering. “In past years, it’s been pretty informal and didn’t really impact the performances, but this year we’ve done a good job sticking to it. We wanted the audience to come away with an impression of the tension we focused on.”

The company members were certainly up to the challenge. Since winter break they have practiced their basic skills each week, while tacking on additional time for every dance they performed in the spring showcase. For some, this meant up to six extra hours of practice a week.

“It’s been fun,” Smith said. “The girls are so sweet, and they all have this common passion for dancing and for ballet. There are no cliques or drama — we get along really well.”