Creative dancing
Irvine Valley College’s Performing Arts Center featured their Performing Dance Ensemble on Friday, April 23rd at noon and 7:30 p.m. There were a variety of eight different dance related performances.
The Performing Dance Ensemble, which was created in 2008, trains intermediate to advanced dancers with company work and professional training. The pieces that were award-winning dances, choreographed by Artistic Director Marie de la Palme, Fabienne Levenson, and other guest choreographers, whose dancers were practiced to perfection by the Dance Ensemble.
The dance performances were ranged from 5 to 10 minutes in length. Before each of the dancers would enter the stage, Marie de la Palme would introduce and give a brief description of the upcoming performance, leaving the audience wondering what was to come.
The dance performances that followed the description, fell short of the hype. While the performances were strong for the most part, the technique of the dancers was not as strong as one would have expected.
All of the dancers had high energy and kept it high throughout the performance – none of the dancers ever showed weakness in their face. The problem with the dance performances all around were that there was a lot of dead moments, and the dances did not have much action going on throughout the entire feat.
Even though the dancers are strong for the most part, they did not seem to focus on having clean all around technique. Toe point and body control were not in abundance during the entire show. The audience also did not seem very enthralled, or impressed with much of the performances.
The dancers performed well with great stage presence, but the all around choreography and difficulty of the dance fell short to the expectations. Little things that are hard to be noticed by the normal eye, were completely ignored by the dancers.
Some techniques can make or break a performance in relation to whether or not it looks clean – these performances did not look clean or precise. The performance, which lacked in the choreography department, failed to keep the audience’s attention.