Gala Showcases Talented Music and Dance

By Broadside Staff Writer Amanda Loerch
Photo by Broadside Photographer Nicolas Tan

George Mason University’s Dance Department held a dance gala last Friday at 8 p.m. in Mason’s Concert Hall. Proud faculty, family and alumni gathered to showcase the best of the best.

The program began with “Reach,” composed by Patrick Corbin, former dancer of a D.C. Metro favorite, the Paul Taylor Dance Company. Marjorie Summerall, program coordinator of the dance department, said Mason’s Concert Hall is the largest venue so far to host Corbin’s piece.

Patrons were delighted with a colorful array of dancers in shirts and Bermuda shorts, delicately evolving stage lights and the bright strings of Philip Glass’s “String Quartet No. 5.”

Any patron taking the elevator or using the restroom might have noticed an autographed poster for when Glass brought his ensemble and singers to the Concert Hall to perform his interpretation of “Beauty and the Beast” in 1995.

When “Eight Jelly Rolls” began, many people wondered how such a name could match such a piece. The choreographer, Twyla Tharp, who has composed more than 150 dances, arranged the dancers to swing and scat to eight licks, the sounds of composer Jelly Roll Morton, known to be the originator of jazz starting in the 1920s.

In their one-piece tuxedo combos, seven dancers looked as though they were improvising with limbs loose enough to make any patron wonder how it was pulled off with such precision.

After a brief intermission, the dancers concluded the evening with “Gloria,” choreographed by dance legend Mark Morris.

Morris’ interpretation of one of Antonio Vivaldi’s sacred work begins with blackness onstage and only music for the first movement. For 30 minutes, the dancers, in their simple attire, beautifully painted each call and response just as how Vivaldi composed the instrumentalists to do.

The only step the dance department could have taken to liven up the performance would have been to have live musicians singing Vivaldi’s glorious work.

Interestingly enough, the University Singers, who had recently sung under Morris in “Dido and Aeneas,” had sung “Gloria” less than five years ago for Morris as well.

Morris worked closely with the dancers on “Gloria” last month while he and his company were at Mason themselves performing his “Dido and Aeneas.” To have such a famous figure in the world of dance such an active supporter of Mason dancers, Summerall, also the gala’s managing director, said “We’re really honored.”

Indeed, the entire gala was an honor for faculty, students and patrons alike. As the Friends of Dance described the performance, it was “a repertory company of talented dancers at the start of their profession careers” along with some of the best directors and choreographers in the business.