Colors of Rhythm  highlights diverse talent

Spontaneous! Creative! Enlightening! Fun!

These are all words that describe the first annual production of The Colors of Rhythm: A Cross-Cultural Dance Presentation.  Oberlin dancers performed works that ranged from spicy, adventurous choreography with Latin root, to traditional South Indian Classical dance, with a little hip-hop thrown in for good measure.

Organized by senior Arati Raghavan and sophomore Anupama Tantri, Colors  was financially sponsored by the Multicultural Resource Center, the Office of Alumni Affairs and the President's Office. The one dollar admission was donated to El Centro, a social service organization in Lorain that provides the Hispanic population with money management programs, information on preventing domestic violence, as well as a Youth and Senior Citizens center. Given the size of the crowd - the largest seen in Finney in a long time - that donation should be quite generous.

The first dance, performed by senior Serjio Acevedo and sophomore Anamaria Alvarez, was a light-hearted, flirtatious salsa dance that was fun, but wasn't all that interesting. It probably wasn't the best thing to start the program off with, but, taken in the context of the concert, it was a good presentation of Latin American Salsa dancing.

It was followed by a truly amazing performance of Middle Eastern/Turkish gypsy dance (better known as "belly" dancing) by first-year Audry Sica. Where the first dance was playfully sexy, this kind of dance is seriously  sensual. Sica's hips and chest seemed to move on their own accord in response to the music.

Sica's control and musical timing, in combination with a costume complete with bells and scarves, was bewitching. Sica has been studying Middle eastern dance for four-and-a-half years, dancing with Ghawazee,  a Pittsburgh-based dance troupe which, she said, is "a professional group that has its own musicians and gets paid, but it's more of a hobby than anything else."

Speaking of hobbies, whoever is in charge of audio upkeep should find a new one. There were a few glitches with the sound during Sica's dance, but at the beginning of the third piece, the music stopped altogether for a good ten minutes due to a faulty cassette deck. The audience and the dancers were very patient, and the general mood was so casual that it didn't really seem to bother anyone too much. Unless you count the poor guy running the music - he looked more frantic than anyone else!

Mishaps like that can often have the potential for ruining an entire concert, throwing off everyone's sense of timing and feeding nervous sympathies between performers and their audience. In this case, however, it was due to the audience's unflagging enthusiasm that allowed the performers to pick up where they left off as though nothing at all had happened.

The third dance on the program was a performance of Odissi  style Indian classical dance, entitled "Batu Nrutya," by junior Rebecca Koper. This style of dance is marked by a series "pure" movements ("nritta") performed to a refrain of rhythmic syllables. Each series of poses is highly stylized, with the slightest tilt of the head signifying something larger. The poses reflected the story and texture within the music, representing the playing of instruments, conversation, and so on.

The clean, strictly classical lines and movements of the Odissi  dance were accentuated by the following piece. Choreographed by senior Funmilayo Jack, "Four Black Women" was an encore performance of the same piece which was on the Spring Dance concert. Set to the music of Nina Simone, the dance presents four common stereotypes of black women - the Mammy figure, the tragic mulatto, the prostitute and the angry black woman.

The atmosphere and the attitude of the dancers in "Four Black Women" were incredible - dancers first-year Camalo Gaskin, sophomore Pyeng Threadgill, sophomore Farah Woodall and Jack all delivered committed performances, but their characters lacked definition. The identities they assumed felt like clothes that were too new to fit well, vague and a little contrived. The unison dancing, however was extremely powerful, and brought real meaning and strength to the dance.

The next piece, a diyya,  or lamp dance, choreographed by junior Seema Shah, is a dance that has always been performed only by women. The music, a traditional devotional song called "Mustt! Mustt!" by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, had been re-mixed, and in the same manner, Shah's choreography re-mixed the traditional elements of the lamp dance. The name of the dance comes from the use of small candles, held in the hands of the dancers as they perform the motions. The effect that the candles had on-stage was breathtaking. The funky beats of re-mixed Ali Khan made the magic fun, but didn't detract from the special scene.

Another bit of classical Indian dance, called Alarippu, was provided by organizers Arati Raghavan and Anupama Tantri. This style, known as Bharatanatyam,  is from South India and is less formal than the previous example of Indian classical dance that was performed earlier in the program. The dance is one of the first that a young dancer performs and is symbolic of her progression as a dancer.

Bharatanatyam  contains poses and gestures that represent Lord Nataraja, God of Dance, but for the most part, it is made up of pure dance steps and rhythms. One noticeable difference was the large amount of facial expression that was involved in the dancing - the eyes and eyebrows of the dancers were almost as active as their twining hands and stomping feet.

The last dance, choreographed by Anamaria Alvarez, was the largest and most up-beat of all the dances in the program. It was a great way to end the program: the dance was choreographically interesting and the dancers, in canon and unison, performed as one solid group, not as many different individuals.

The choreography for the last piece incorporated combinations of movements form a variety of places. Alvarez said that every turn, jump, and step of the dance was filled with all the significance of the country of its origins. Movements from Africa, Cuba, Latin America, Congo, Jamaica, Italy and West Africa combined with elements of modern dance (Dunham technique), jazz and hip-hop to sum up in one final burst of movement the whole purpose of the concert: understanding and unification.

All together now:Colors of Rhythm  featured dance pieces by Oberlin choreographers ranging from salsa to hip-hop to belly dancing, and everything in between, delighting the packed house (photo by Heidi Johansen)