‘The True Colors of Dance’ was this year’s theme for the WTAMU Dance department’s annual spring concert. The concert featured five pieces, all of which incorporated colors in costuming, set design, and the overall theme of the individual piece.

The concert kicked off with Catching Colors for Butterflies, -a simple yet visually appealing piece using colored fabric. Although the dance technique was not terribly complex, the movement coupled with the use of fabric created a cool effect.

Night After the Storm took a different approach from Catching Colors with the absence of color, telling a story of loss and recovery. The piece featured guest choreographer Matthew Lindstrom and interim dance director Leslie Meek. The two dancers had an incredible amount of control, were in sync with their movements and were able to portray emotions easily. The dance started off slow, steadily began to pick up intensity and suddenly stopped, which seemed to throw off the entire flow of the piece.

The Seasons picked up the mood with a retelling of the four seasons. The piece was a contemporary ballet on pointe, and for a hardcore admirer of anything pointe, it was great. The four dancers each wore a different color to represent spring, summer, fall and winter. The music and choreography was beautiful, but the timing was off at some points throughout the dance.  Perhaps the dancers´ range of heights and unequal sized limbs affected their timing. I wasn’t sure in some areas whether the dancers had planned to be off by a half-second.

Colors of Motion was a modern piece, telling a story of how a famous sculpture of a man and woman came to be created. The dance featured Matthew Lindstrom and WT Dance student Danielle Gerber. Both dancers worked well together, conveying the right amount of emotions and pulling off difficult partner work. The choreography was beautiful, but the dance may be too sensual for some people’s tastes, especially at the end.

The final piece was Filipenese, choreographed by J.M Rebudal, my favorite dance out of the entire show. The theme,  Asiatic-tribal mix, was filled with acrobatics, lifts, and just fun choreography overall. The costuming added a nice touch, with gold tops, split pants, and crazy hair. There were obvious differences in arm movements at some points. Some dancers were stronger than others, which is to be expected in a dance department.

I love the idea of showing the different colors of dance. However the concert was almost too short to be able to illustrate it.

The Dance department started to work on “True Colors” in October. According to Meek, the dancers put in about 20-30 hours of rehearsal time a week prior to the show, including a full week of rehearsals from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. with the dancers’ full class loads.