Choreographers and dancers showcased their talents and broke the boundary separating the stage and the audience over the weekend in “chaos theory.”  

Two student choreographers, Rayven Cherry and Meghan Morgan, faculty artist Carlo Antonio Villanueva and visiting artist Laja Field choreographed four distinct dances with University of Minnesota dance majors. There were several moments when dancers interacted with the audience, and the choreographers said they worked hard to emulate that. 

Cherry, a recent graduate, choreographed her dance “in-teriority” as a capstone project during the 2024 fall semester. Her dance is an expressive contemporary dance with influences of ballet, jazz, hip hop and African Diaspora.

Cherry wanted to tell her own story of adversity while making it relatable to the dancers and audience members. She wanted the dancers to bring out their truest selves in her dance. 

“How can you bring everything you know within this piece?” Cherry said. “It’s not just like you’re watching me, and I’m just dancing for you.”

To Cherry, the dancers are more connected to the dance and the audience when they are present with who they are and their current emotions. 

At the start of the dance, Cherry came out by herself and danced without music. It was just her breathing. Later in her piece, Cherry and the rest of the dancers performed only to the sound of breathing. Then there was a 30-second period when the dancers stared at the audience. 

Morgan, a junior, also tried to break the barrier between the dancers and the audience in her dance, “land as One leave as Many.” Her dance was space-themed, and she edited the music herself. The music was a mix of sound clips counting down a takeoff and sonar beeps. 

A lot of the time, Morgan said dance performances can be so formal. She did not want hers to feel that way. 

“I want to include the audience in on the piece,” Morgan said. “The dancers are experiencing something, and I want the audience to experience it with them.” 

Morgan is studying abroad in New Zealand, so she did not dance in the concert. 

Her dancers, clad in purple and silver gloves, made wide facial expressions. They made eye contact with the audience. They even came into the audience and danced in a line down the stairs of the seating area. 

At the end of the dance, there was a flash of light. The dancers imitated the look of them running into the audience at full speed just as the lights turned off. They stomped, and audience members giggled and shrieked. 

In Villanueva’s piece “on and on our way,” the dancers looked into the audience several times and would run in front of the audience. The dancers rotated in circles around each other as the lights rotated above them. 

The last dance, Field’s piece “Futura,” was a long story about furniture. Dancers acted as characters called “pastels,” chairs and a lamp. One pastel did not want the furniture to be used and to keep the furniture stored away in the attic. All the other pastels wanted the furniture to be seen and used. 

The dancer, as the lamp, wore a long, gold dress with a glowing lampshade on their head. All the furniture dancers wore white, like the physical chairs used as props in the dance. The pastels wore pastel-colored outfits. 

A pastel dancer acted out an advertisement to the audience to show the many uses for the chairs. They moved two chair dancers into a seated position on the floor, sat on them and the chair dancers shook the pastel. The pastels imitated the sound a person makes when they sit on a massage chair. 

The audience laughed, whooped, hollered and cheered throughout the piece. 

Julia Jacobson, a senior, danced as a pastel in Field’s piece. Jacobson learned the art of building character, expanding herself as a dancer and expanding the story in the performance.

Lola LaFond, a senior, performed in three of the four dances. She said she learned how to balance working closely with friends and being professional when the stage lights turned on from dancing in “chaos theory.” 

This concert was one of the seniors’ last public performances. 

“It’s our last hurrah,” LaFond said. “We get to dance with each other, and it’s our last show. It’s bittersweet.” 

Both LaFond and Jacobson related the dances to their lives outside of dance. Each dance deals with something unknown, and with both of them graduating this spring, they relate to the chaos in that. 

“We’re all working through it,” Jacobson said. “There’s also so much going on politically. We’re working together, especially in the art community.” 

There is a lot of stress in the world, but both LaFond and Jacobson are relishing their time in the Barbara Baker Center for Dance. They agreed they feel comforted by the arts. 

“As much as how horrible it is everywhere else, I know I can walk into this building, be with these people and know we are all safe,” Jacobson said.