Fifteen dancers extend their arms out slowly in unison, as if about to give someone the biggest of hugs. Their chests, filling with air, carry a spectrum of emotions. Their gazes, lifted upwards, send energy into the audience. Immersed in sound and light, the audience takes what their hearts call for from the dancers’ intentionality, whether that’s desire, excitement, or grief.

For the second time this year, dancers from Barnard and Columbia stepped onto the New York Live Arts stage for their fall semester showcase. The dance department assembled a roster of four notable choreographers, each stylistically diverse, who created dance numbers that incorporated distinct themes and movement styles including contemporary, ballet, and hip hop. Despite these differences, there was a throughline of shared compositional elements—such as the use of spoken word and dancers making contact with the back wall. Ingenious choreographic decisions tested the dancers’ readiness to step outside their comfort zones and their trust in the artistic process.

Jenna Riegel’s “Ecdysis” is a dynamic exploration of the intersection between biology and dance, a corporeal expression of “shedding” in its most literal and abstract terms. At times, the dancers massaged their bodies against the floor, rolling and emerging. More often, they returned to a flat-back position with their arms tucked close to the body, hands rattling, fingers tight like blades. “Energetic serenity” is the phrase that comes to mind to describe the piece’s shifting aura. Before a moment of rebirth was identified, a sudden upbeat rhythm arrived and dancers cart-wheeled, turned, and fish-flopped, prompting the audience to wonder if this was a moment of celebration.

Moments of spoken word stood out throughout the piece. Dancers took turns speaking into a handheld mic, providing verbal guidance to interpret the movements which oscillated between curves, lines, and angles. When one dancer said, “I am entangled with the aliveness in the world,” the ending spotlight landed on her, not the soloist dancing—the aliveness of the world more carried by the spoken word than the movement.

Also embedded with spoken word was Jennifer Archibald’s “Duty.” Though the shortest piece of the program, it was surely the most fierce and electric. Sporting green cargo pants and determined gazes, the dancers executed a range of contemporary, street-style, and acrobatic movements. Technically-challenging lifts, both in the group and in pairs, amped up the energy. From a barrel jump to a baby freeze, the dancers maintained finesse while dancing full-out. The group images, often composed of sharp lines, were enhanced by the lighting designed by HaeJin Han, the dance department’s newly hired technical director. The lighting particularly shone in “Duty,” adding momentum to movement and drama to heavy beats.

The words spoken in “Duty” were taken from political activist Angela Davis, surrounding the themes of radical feminism that would not have come through movement alone. Creating a jarring disconnect between the movement and Davis’ words challenging the gender hierarchy, the one male dancer in the cast was placed at the center of the ending image, weakening the message of gender upheaval.

The mood of the theater quieted down after intermission, at the start of Tiffany Mangulabnan’s “Chosen Oceans.” The piece stood out in its thematic cohesion and simplicity. It sharply contrasted “Duty” in its slowness, though in no way did the pace compromise its adventurous spirit. “Chosen Oceans” was the only piece of the night that utilized live music.

Upright bassist Carmen Q. Rothwell played and sang live throughout the 25-minute piece, creating a compelling connection between kinetic and acoustic energy. Her vocalization was light and airy—at times with words, other times just humming—fitting in seamlessly with the sound of calm waves in the background. The movement motifs, like how the index finger traced curves in space, resembled the fluid qualities of water present in the sound.

The silence in Rothwell’s music was matched by frequent pauses in movement, allowing for complete stillness. At times Rothwell triggered a new start in their movement; at others, the dancer initiated. At one point, dancer Nicholas Meyers, CC ’24, repeatedly flicked his wrists, mimicking the motion of Rothwell’s plucking. As he walked past another dancer, the nearing of his wrists triggered the onset of their movement. Compelling too was the movement’s ability to push the boundaries of ballet, specifically regarding the function of the dancers’ pointe shoes. On their knees, they went on the box of the pointe shoe, turning on their hands to go into a reverse plank. It added delicacy to each dancer’s posture.

“Inflection,” choreographed by Norbert De La Cruz III, kept the audience in a dream-like, emotional trance to finish the show. Its cast, the largest of all four pieces, served the energy of the piece well, allowing for more possibilities in group imagery. From the entrance, when they entered the space and marched in a circle, they continued to form innovative group images, such as when Thy-Lan Alcalay, BC ’25, appeared to hover a foot off the ground, parallel to both the ground and everyone else’s bodies lying down.

The frenzy created by solos comprising of seemingly improvised movements made the unison group moments a riveting visual contrast. The large group choreography itself, like the inflection point in a wave, found the perfect middle where texture can exist within smoothness, undulations can exist with lines, and isolations can exist within the flow. The elasticity of the movement was mesmerizing. The dancers’ individual voices were also within the piece, mixed into the soundtrack. The music, carrying a contagious cinematic quality, swelled and pushed the emotionality to new heights. Live singing by Sofia Bianchi, GS ’23, who continued to dance in the piece herself, added another dimension to the sentence in the soundtrack, “she never stops moving.” It felt right for the “she” to be elusive, giving the audience the responsibility and privilege of thinking for themselves.

The spoken word elements, utilization of the back wall, and live vocalization in “Inflection” unintentionally called back moments from the previous three pieces, drawing the program to a satisfying end. As the house lights came on, the dancers left the audience savoring the ways they used their voices, pointe shoes, and dancing bodies in courageous ways.