Urban Nights Dance Fusion Review

When people usually attend dance performances, they are detached to a certain extent; that is, they have no relation to the dancers or the company. These people are able to admire the performances from a relatively objective point of view, (hopefully) evaluating the dances on the basis of their intrinsic value. However, when a Stanford student attends a Stanford dance performance, the evaluation of the performance becomes inseparable from the student’s subjective experiences at Stanford. This was the case when I attended Stanford’s Urban Nights Dance Fusion on Saturday night, April 5.

Overall, I was stunned—partially by the quality of some of the dances, but mostly by the realization that these were my peers performing; peers with problem sets due this week and essays to write after the show. I recognized some of the dancers as my acquaintances from Roble, or from previous classes I had taken. I had no idea these people were in dance groups on campus; nor did I know they possessed such talent and passion. General astonishment aside, however, I found it in me to offer at least some critique of my peers’ performances.

Discounting any potential dance recruiters in the audience, it appeared that the primary goal of UNDF was to entertain, and entertain it did. Opening with Fleet Street and Cardinal Ballet, UNDF had the audience engaged from the start. When Fleet Street broke from the traditional Stanford Hymn into rap, the audience immediately broke out into laughter. The first performance after Intermission (Voulez-Vous Danser Avec Moi) featured a dance similar to that in Center Stage when two women dance-fight over a man; likewise, it had the audience laughing and utterly focused on the performance so as to silence any post-intermission distractions. The music for the performances were fitting and engaging in themselves; I found myself looking up the lyrics to James Blunt’s “I Really Want You” and Citizen Cope’s “Let the Drummer Kick” after the show, only to find the songs were listed in the program. The costumes were memorable and well-coordinated. Furthermore, the overall event only lasted two hours with each performance taking about 5 minutes so that attention was held and maintained, making UNDF a success with regard to the entertainment/engagement factor.

That said, the performances were far from perfect. Many of the dances (such as Four by Six) were not synchronized among the individual dancers, leaving me an unsatisfied feeling similar to that when watching an orchestra performance where the individual bows are moving in arbitrary directions. Some of the Basmati Raas dancers were stickless by the end of their performance, though this did not hinder their enthusiasm. I also found the costumes of Mongolian Chopsticks a bit revolting, considering I initially confused them with alien costumes. Still, my complaints are few.

Something I admired most from the dancers was the passion. It felt like they were having more fun performing than the audience was watching them (which was great already, thus placing the dancers high on the fun spectrum). This made the event less formal, for instead of the nonchalance expected in many dance performances, the audience was met with bare, nakedly euphoric—however unprofessional—faces. The passion of the dancers was particularly apparent in Swingtime’s two performances, Mack the Knife and Dancing Fool, in which all the dancers were singing along to the songs and smiling incessantly. The energy in many of the performances was undeniable, particularly in Alliance’s Fuego and dv8’s Go Hard or Go Home, the two hip-hop performances.

By far the most impressive of the performances was the closing one, The Black Parade, which included a medley of all the dancers. The choreography was innovative, featuring a roundtable-like formation of background dancers walking in single file in a large oval that stretched from the stage to the front of the first row of seats. The Stanford Chinese Dance group whipped out their red ribbons, painting beautiful patterns in the air. Kathryn Kilner’s (I believe that is her name; correct me if I am wrong) pirouettes were flawless, punctuating the roundtable and wowing the audience. Lastly, the coordination of choreography amongst all the groups sent out a commentary on the performance as a whole, integrating all the separate dances and leaving the audience with a single, synergistic, impression of Stanford dance—one of appreciation and admiration.

~Dominique Youkhehpaz