Dance Company Closes Out Season With "How, Then, Shall We Live?"

The NMH Dance Company closes out the academic year with its annual Spring Dance Concert on May 8 to 10 in the Chiles Theater at the Rhodes Arts Center.

The concert, titled “How, Then, Shall We Live?”, is the final installment of the dance company’s yearlong dive into the NMH humanities program’s “four essential questions.” It features choreography by nine students, two faculty pieces, and a dance designed by guest artist Yvonne-Marie Sain ’02. 

The dances build on the previous terms’ themes of “Power & Powerlessness” and “What Does it Mean to be Human?” to address the last essential question: “How, then, shall I live?”

“As artists, we're always building on the last thing that we did,” said dance teacher and Performing Arts Department Chair Gretel Schatz. “Some kids have very specific answers to that question, while others are more abstract.” 

The show opens with the dance that students worked on with Sain during a brief residency after spring break. A former student of Schatz’s, Sain now teaches dance in New York City at the Broadway Dance Center. 

Student-choreographed pieces range in style from hip-hop and jazz to modern and ballet, with elements of traditional dances from around the world found in many of the performances.

“I think this is the most excited I've been about student pieces as a collective in some time,” said teacher Nicole Williams. “Across the board, student choreographers have gotten more intentional about their connection to the theme throughout the year.”

Williams added that she’s particularly impressed by students’ incorporating techniques and styles from their homes and cultural backgrounds into their work.

“One choreographer is doing a dance with a skirt about the Puerto Rican revolution; another is incorporating Chinese fan dance into a hip-hop piece,” Williams said. “You can see they are showcasing themselves in a way that exposes their classmates to their heritage and interests. I'm really happy to have a program where kids are doing so many forms of dance that they would never have access to if we didn't have this ‘shareable-learning’ type of model.”

The nine seniors in this semester’s Dance Company will also perform a group piece choreographed with help from Williams, in addition to senior solos.

“This is my fourth year at NMH, so this is the first set of seniors I’ve seen all the way through,” Williams said. “To see the leadership that these kids are displaying, how they've evolved in their choreography, how they’re engaging artistically in interdisciplinary ways, building relationships with people, directing their performances — it’s impressive to watch.”

That collaboration is on full display in the work of student choreographer Cherry Liu ’26 and technical designer Alvin Wang ’25, who partnered to develop Liu’s piece in the concert, “It Feels Like the Spring I’ve Forgotten.”

The dance, which centers around ideas of inner reflection and self-evolution, incorporates an innovative combination of stage props, lighting, and sound design by Wang that Liu’s performers move through and interact with to tell the story.

For Wang, who graduates this month, the spring dance concert presented one last chance to apply the skills he’s developed in his time at NMH to a collaboration with his friend.

“This whole year to me is about massive self-improvement,” Wang said, “but this self-improvement wouldn’t have happened if I had not learned and listened a lot from my fellow artist and one of my best friends, Cherry. One of the big things that I learned from working with her is to ‘push and pull’ when I am designing; in other words, do not forget to look at the broader picture while being attentive.”

Liu said that working with Wang, her teachers, and her classmates on this project and throughout the year has helped her to develop depth in her choreography.

“I think this is the first time that I felt I was narrating a story through my dance to the audience,” Liu said. “Last year, I was more focused on the perfection of the overall look of the dance, so I didn’t think there was a very meaningful theme to any of them. I found that I was deeply inspired by talking and expressing myself to Gretel, to my friends, to Alvin, and also listening to what others think about my ideas.”

A sense of celebration permeates the Spring Dance Concert: for spring, for the end of the semester, and for the artistic journey and self-awareness the members of the Dance Company have developed through this year.

“I leave rehearsal every day thinking, ‘What fantastic kids,’” Schatz said. “I want students to feel invested and empowered. Even if I give them something a little bit weird or out of their comfort zone, have I, as a teacher, created a space where they feel comfortable stepping into that?”

“It's been cool to watch the students become more invested in making things,” concurred Williams. “How you engage in this process really impacts how you engage in your thinking about and interactions in the world around you, in this community and abroad, even if it's not in the curriculum. You use those influences to create — it's like the ultimate test, in a sense: ‘What did you learn?’

“There's a fluidness about going through life, and there's also a discipline and accuracy that is necessary,” Williams added, “and, then in the end, there’s joy.”

The NMH Dance Company performs “How, Then, Shall We Live?” on Thursday, May. 8, at 7:30 pm, Friday, May 9, at 8 pm and on Saturday, May 10, at 7:30 pm. The May 9 show will feature a “Talk Back” question and answer session with the performers after the show. 

Tickets can be reserved online. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early.

Photos by Matthew Cavanaugh Photography. See more images from the Spring Dance Concert on Flickr.