Among Daffodils

After attending the Modern Dance and Improv Club Dance Concert and observing all the the pieces choreographed by both students and professors that included so many different elements of dance there was one piece that really stood out to me from the moment it began. The piece “Among Daffodils” choreographed by Sara Galo performed by a small group of dancers caught my eye for many reasons; the movement style, the story that was told, performance quality, costumes, and lighting. When the piece began with a dim lit stage and an arranged clump of dancers facing upstage in the back right corner of the space I was unsure what to expect. The music started, a seemingly simple and calmly upbeat song, but the first dancer turned towards the audience with a look of misery and sadness, almost like she didn't know what to do next. She held her hands out infront of her towards the audience, left slightly higher than the right, as if about to grab something and suddenly stopped as her hands began shaking and
The simplicity of the costumes didn’t outshine the story being told on stage and were a perfect fit for the movement style. This piece used a lot of movement guided by the pelvis which is something we focused on it class this year. Because the movement was pulled from the pelvis it followed the theme that these people were trying so hard to keep up with life that they maybe started to fall behind. The lighting of the dance was dim at first and matched the opening movement, later on in the piece the cyclorama was lit with red which perfectly fit with the expression and performance of the dancers internal struggle. A stand out aspect to me was the music, this gentle hopeful sounding music played throughout the piece that only grew in dynamics towards the middle and end, flawlessly contrasted the story being portrayed on the