Talk about dancing with the stars...

This past Saturday night I attended Dance Fusion and was blown away by the variety and talent of the student dance groups at Stanford which truly exemplify the diversity upon which glorious Stanford prides itself. Unfortunately, I think the incredible variety in companies at Stanford ultimately limits their ability to present their work. According to an inside source, relations with the dance department itself are tense and thus resources and venues are hard to come by, leading to this, somewhat haphazard, amalgam of groups, all stuck together in an effort to pull together an audience no individual group could muster. Yet, inevitably, I think this causes for a clash of expectations and intentions that led to a wide range of responses to the show.

In all fairness, I think the general audience, myself included, recognized that the show was extremely well-performed, and many were especially pleased by Black Parade, the final number which combined several of the groups in one act. On the other hand, I think the rest of the show lacked this crowd-pleasing element, despite its skillful performance.

For better or for worse, I think the goal of each of the individual groups was to present a number or several numbers which best represented and showcased their style of dance, leading to a dozen distinct sections. Meanwhile, the audience was, for the most part I imagine, in search of something specific and was instead greeted by this wide array. For some, this was likely a pleasant spread; for others, I imagine this was a little disappointing. To draw an analogy, it was as if you decided to go and see a Hugh-Grant-mindless-romantic-comedy and instead got 6 minutes of a Stephen King adaptation, followed by ten minutes of a Michael Moore doc, followed by a 2 minute Disney animated short, with only four minutes of delightfully cliche romcom dialogue stuck in the middle.

Ultimately, I don't blame the performers or the audience: I think it was fair for the performers to want to perform their own work without having to adapt it to fit into some more generalized mold, but it was also fair for the audience to want to see a ballet or a modern dance show and not a little bit of each with a whole bunch of other stuff too. In the end, maybe it was even an effective strategy, because now I'm inspired to seek out a performance by each individual group.