Fall Dance Concert Explores the Nature of Power

What does it mean to have power? The term defies easy definition. Is power dynamic and electric, or solid and concrete? Is it something possessed by many or relegated to a few? Where does it come from, and where does it end?

These are just a few of the questions explored in Northfield Mount Hermon’s fall dance concert, “Power & Powerlessness.” The three-night show runs Nov. 14, 15, and 16 in the Rhodes Arts Center’s Chiles Theater. 

Through movement and music, each piece in the concert tells its own story of the nature of power, its ebb and flow, and the many faces it wears. The performance features choreography from NMH faculty and students, as well as a guest artist, and a mosaic of traditional and contemporary dance styles.

“We have a contemporary ballet piece, a K-pop piece, a couple of hip-hop pieces, and a handful of contemporary pieces,” said Gretel Schatz, department chair of the dance program and one of the show’s choreographers. “We have a student who has made a hip-hop Navajo tribal fusion piece, bringing her identity as a Navajo person into the dance. It’s all really powerful.”

Inspiration for “Power & Powerlessness” came from a cross-disciplinary meditation on the four central questions explored in NMH’s Humanities I course, which Schatz says will be used throughout the school year as a framework for the Dance Company’s performances. 

“If you're making something creative, you're interpreting something, and so we always try to collaborate with other departments,” said Schatz. “In the fall, we’re working with power and powerlessness; in the winter, we're doing the question ‘What does it mean to be human?’; and in the spring, we're going to do ‘How, then, shall we live?’”

Students and faculty used that first concept to frame their performance pieces for this show. They also drew inspiration from a recent visual arts exhibit in The Gallery at the Rhodes Arts Center, “Tertiary Effects,” by artist Jess Star.

“Star came and worked with the dance company. We did a big gallery talk and ended up really spending some time with Star’s work, looking at motifs and ideas about socioeconomic class and the symbols of class,” Schatz said.

Fellow NMH dance teacher Nicole Williams drew on the poetry of Audre Lorde for her choreographed piece, asking students to meditate on the way power molds a person’s perspective over time.

“I really appreciate the opportunity to grapple with these questions that the kids are thinking about in their academics throughout their time here,” she said. “They have been embodying the journey of the story in many different ways.”

Each choreographer crafted their own take on the theme, working with student performers, lighting designers, and the NMH costume department to bring their vision to life. The diversity of styles in the performance speaks to the open-ended nature of the theme, Williams said, and lends a multicultural depth to the overall message.

“Kids are coming into the company from different backgrounds, who have different levels of experience in different styles, and they are showcasing that through their choreography,” Williams said. “They're teaching each other – instead of going to a studio and just getting this from teachers, you're learning from your peers who have these experiences from all around the world.”

“There's a lot of different approaches,” said Bonnie He ’25. The variety of viewpoints lends itself to a nuanced rumination on the theme, she added, which is further influenced by each performer’s personal style. This diversity is facilitated through the NMH Dance Company’s unique approach in centering student experience.

“NMH dance has given me the confidence to try new things in spaces I was originally reserved in,” said Lanie Blanton ’25. “Gretel and Nicole encourage all of us to bring our backgrounds to the studio, share it with the company, and eventually gain the confidence to perform on stage.”

This approach reflects the guiding principles of the NMH dance program, Schatz said, which seeks to balance technical proficiency with artistic expression and self-discovery.

“As a teacher, I want all of my students to feel like their experience is valid, interesting, and worthy of communicating,” Schatz said. “While we want our students to be technically proficient, we also want them to grow into proficient artists. Creating spaces for students to be themselves, to talk about their experience and find a way to process, and then create something feels really important.”

Williams described the process as a sort of “embodied storytelling as a pedagogy,” asking students to consider their work through the lens of what they’re taught, the origins of those dance movements, and how that connects with their personal experience.

“How do we embody a narrative that helps us find it in our own bodies or in our own experience?” Williams said. “And then, how do we use the tools that we have to communicate that out to an audience?”

It’s a framework that fosters a strong sense of shared experience within the dance program, said Maren Batchelder ’26, and reflects the school’s ethos.

“The dance company is a very strong community, and I think you can kind of see that through the dances we create,” Batchelder said. “It surrounds the key themes of the school, like what it means to be human, and how, then, shall I live? It all kind of connects together.”

The NMH fall dance concert, “Power & Powerlessness,” opens Thursday, Nov. 14, at 7:30 p.m., with additional shows on Friday, Nov. 15, at 8 p.m., and Saturday, Nov. 16, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are free and can be reserved.