By Rema Atiya/se news editor
SE Campus dance students will show what they learned in Dance Works 7:30 p.m. May 6-7 in Roberson Theatre.
“We hold this showcase once every semester,” said Jamie Perrin, SE dance instructor. “This gives the students a chance to show what they have worked on all semester.”
Throughout the semester, students learn dances from the particular genre that they signed up for at the beginning of the semester.
“But I have seen this showcase grow more than ever in the past three years I have worked here,” Perrin said.
Along with the students that will perform in the showcase, the SE Campus dance company will also perform.
The company consists of 10 students who auditioned for the company at the beginning of the semester to learn not just one type of dance but a mix of them all.
“Last semester, about 40 students tried out for the company,” Perrin said. “The students that do get chosen for the company always have a chance to work with different choreographers.”
This semester, the guest choreographers were from the Rhapsody Dance Company in New York.
“Alisa Paradowski and Max Jones were here for a weekend and spent about two and a half days with the students in the company,” Perrin said. “Alisa showed them a hip-hop dance while Max showed them a contemporary-style dance.”
Not only will students participate in this showcase but faculty as well.
“Sung-Hun Lim and Bethany Nelson will both perform solo performances in the show,” she said.
This showcase is a performance but also a grade for some of the students.
“This performance is a final for the students in my classes,” Perrin said. “I let the teachers choose if they want to use this performance as a grade or not.”
The students will be graded on their skills in the dance and the memorization, which are the same things they have been graded on all semester except on a larger scale, she said.
About 130 students will perform in the showcase.
“The past two years, people have been waiting in the lobby for tickets or available seats to come up so they could watch the show,” Perrin said. “If you think about it, if there are 130 students and each one invites two people, that already is 260 people that will need to be seated.”
This show is free for TCC students, faculty and staff and $5 for general admission.
People wanting to watch the show should arrive early to get a good seat or any seat at all, Perrin said.
“When I first got here three years ago, nobody knew that there was such a thing as dance classes at SE Campus,” Perrin said. “This will be the fifth concert, and we are very lucky to have such strong support from the community and the campus.”
