Belle Baggs said the annual University of Idaho Dance Theatre concert serves as a chance for students to push the limits of dance.
“This is a chance to push that edge, and to see where I can take [the students],” said Baggs, the director of the 2015 performance.
The concert is a compilation of several dances choreographed by different individuals and Baggs, a UI movement science professor, said each year, people audition for the show and choreographers choose students to perform their pieces.
This year”s concert, Rising Momentum, will be held at 7:30 p.m. Friday through Sunday in the Hartung Theatre. The show opened Thursday.
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Tickets are $10 for the general public and $8 for students.
Baggs said the show is named Rising Momentum because each dance explores how momentum can be built through movement.
Anna Keller, a choreographer for the performance, said she uses her life as inspiration for the dances she designs.
When it comes to choreographing dances, Keller said her pieces explore the ways dancers interact with one another and compare human and mechanical methods of communication.
“The dancers have to work hard together,” Keller said.
Ben Devaud, a recent UI graduate, signed on for another dance class at the university in order to participate in the fall performance.
Devaud said he was a biology major when he first took a dance class and fell in love with the art.
“I had seen (dance) in videos,” Devaud said. “But I never thought it was so hard.”
Devaud is one of the students in a dance directed by Baggs and said the dance is a continuation of one of their summer pieces.
Although dance is a challenging art form, Devaud said his favorite part of dancing is finding the special moments in the dance when everything works together.
Alexandra Sipe, an English major with a minor in dance, is one of the students who will perform in Baggs” piece with Devaud.
Sipe said when she saw a performance of the Rite of Spring she immediately thought, “I wanna learn how to dance like that.”
Sipe is in three of the dances that compose the Rising Momentum concert and she said the hardest part of performing is maintaining her stamina for all of them.
Despite the physical challenges of performing in so many dance numbers throughout the course of one concert, Sipe said her favorite aspect of dancing is being able to be a part of something bigger than herself.
Baggs, who choreographed one of the performance pieces, “Settle/Unsettle,” said the best part about this year”s concert is exploration of momentum and the mechanics of movement.
Katie Colson can be reached at [email protected]