Visualizing Social Change: QC Fall Dance Concert Review

I have danced in a dance studio on a competition team for 12 years before I graduated High School. Dance was my first passion in the fine arts and I will always have a love for it. When I was assigned to go to the QC Fall Dance Concert, Dimensions, I was excited. I walked in and looked at it very critically. I enjoyed the theme of the show: how we can travel through two different mediums or dimensions. The works were choreographed by Edisa Weeks who also directed, Richard Move, Gabriel “Kwikstep” Dionisio, and Marshall L. Davis Jr. Most of the pieces dealt with how we as a society struggle to differentiate and interact in two different worlds: media/technology and reality; this is evident in every piece in many different ways.

In Edisa Weeks’ piece, The Future of Memory, the dancers are filmed by a tiny camera that makes many different projections, highlighting and silhouetting the dancers as the dance. For instance if the dancer was jumping up and down continuously, the camera could project them as a white silhouette or make it as though they are layering a picture over each jump; it is harder to explain than it is to watch. There was a lot of visual pleasure coming from this piece that kind of scared me when I began to internalize and interpret what the piece could stand for. Having the projections behind the dancers as they danced is metaphorical for social media. You can be caught on camera doing anything and have it misinterpreted, either for entertainment purposes or for the lack of communication. This is a constant problem that we have in our media. We can apply this to every police brutality video that has existed and been posted online. We can see that there is a lack of communication and that people are dying because of it. At the end of the piece the dancers pick up the camera and look at it as the lights go down. We must look at the media and how we are using it and must use it for good and not evil, or revenge.

Marshall Davis’ piece is unique in its way of showing the dimensions we live in. His tap piece to Nina Simone’s “Westwind”, it is evident that he is pushing for social justice for the Black Lives Matter protest because in the beginning of the piece there is an edited mix of quotes from media coverage of all of the socially unjust problems in this country. From quotes from news stories to “Black Lives Matter” chants, Davis’ piece really explores the world of media coverage of social injustice and what we as a society do about it. The dancers follow the same rhythmic step, which uses the same physical patterns of walking, for most of it with it being broken by a percussive phrase or a solo. When I interpret this, I see this as that when there is a new percussive phrase or solo, that is when something bad could be happening in media or the country. When the dancers return to their normal rhythmic steps it can be seen as the media and everyone in society moving on from it and almost waiting for the next big thing to happen only to move on again. It is scary how close this hit home.

Overall I am very pleased with Dimensions. It wasn’t necessarily some of my favorite styles of dance but it was extremely entertaining to watch.