Mixing ballet with hip-hop, gravity with momentum and light with shadow, Boston University students performed for the opening night of the fifth annual Aurora Borealis: A Festival of Light and Dance last night, drawing approximately 70 audience members.
“Dance is a complex subject to teach,” said Aurora Borealis Co-Director Micki Taylor-Pinney before the event. “You have to know a lot about anatomy . . . you want someone who is going [to] be creating interesting combinations. That all comes from experience.”
The College of Fine Arts’s School of Theatre and the Physical Education, Recreation and Dance Department collaborated to produce the performances, which took place at the Boston Center for the Arts’s Calderwood Pavilion. The show concludes Sunday.
The festival has evolved into a four-day dance show featuring seven choreographed works focusing on the movement of dance and light, according to a Jan. 17 press release.
“As part of the Design and Production program in the School of Theatre, students learn lighting for stage productions,” said CFA public relations and marketing associate Jean Connaughton in an email. “Aurora Borealis showcases the interactions between light and dance, which gives lighting designers the opportunity to learn how to light the moving form.”
The event featured several pieces of students’ work, including a piece in which flashlights illuminated a dance. The BU Dance Theatre Group presented collaborations with faculty, lighting designers, choreographers, actors and musicians from the School of Theatre.
“Aurora Borealis is based on pieces that will be good selections for lighting designers,” Taylor-Pinney said. “There are four pieces that were performed in PERD that are being performed in Aurora Borealis. One has more skilled dancers, but the other two have more a mix of beginner to advanced dancers.”
DTG offers students of different dance levels — both CFA and non-CFA students — the opportunity to study and work together, Connaughton said. DTG members — comprised of approximately 65 performing members and 80 non-performing members — take technique classes of their choosing every Thursday night.
“I joined DTG initially to perform,” said DTG President Katie Watts before the event. “Once I started going to meetings more regularly, I found it to be a good community to meet other people who enjoy the same art forms as I do.”