A variety of Expressions

"Lights dimming!" shouts the lighting and audio technician as the lights keep their brightness and the music starts to play.

It's another night of rehearsal in preparation for the Chaffey Dance concert as Professor Michele Jenkins casts her meticulously relentless gaze on the performers' every movement, making sure "…energy is coming out of those body parts!" and that the dancers are both careful and deliberate with the "affectation of their movements."

For most of us the art of dance only comes via "Dancing with the Stars" and "So You Think You Can Dance?" It comes from that same flat screen world which gives us infomercials and the dead beaten horse known as the American sitcom. But sitting in the house of the Chaffey College Theater, watching the sweat, passion and discipline of these dancers is rather astonishing to say the least.

The piece currently being performed is titled Lost Highway, the modern dance piece that is a seeming collage of grace, unity, timing and raw athleticism. Watching a performance like this one can't help but wonder where the line is drawn between dance and acrobatics.

"It's a huge learning experience," says 3rd year performer Yvonne Rodriguez, a liberal studies and dance major. "You learn execution, positioning, timing, movement, and then you do it all in front of an audience…a lot goes into it."

For 30+ years the Chaffey College Dance show has been an annual event known community wide, and for 29 of those years Professor Michelle Jenkins has been acquainting audiences with the breadth and variety that is the art of dance, a breadth and variety that also extends to the performers themselves.

"I did ballet and tap in junior high, did color guard all through-out high school.
But it wasn't until I got to Chaffey that I started formal training." says linguistics major Krystal Corona. "It's not my major. I just do it for the experience and personal challenge."

Illustrating this point even further is the very next routine being rehearsed, entitled Nutcracker in Spring, a giddy tongue in cheek parody of the 1891 Tchaikovsky ballet. As the title suggests, the tone of the routine consists of movement's reminiscent of vaudevillian pratfalls yet still maintains the rigorous nature of the art. Moreover it becomes apparent that this one piece contains elements of ballet, hip hop and musical theater type movements.

Variety.

There's that word again.

The word is there again because it indeed serves as the strength of the show. If one were to see an out of season production of Nutcracker one would get only ballet. If one were to go see the musical of My One and Only, one would only see tap-dancing, and if one were to visit the Jersey Shore, all one would see is fist pumping because "I gotta tell ya' that dat music's comin' right at ya' an' ya' gotta beat it back, bro! Ya' gotta beat it back! Ya' just gotta beat it back, bro!!"

With one visit to a performance of "Expressions", the 2010 Chaffey College Dance Show, affords one the opportunity to explore eight different styles of dance under 10 different directors with a cast of 40+ dancers. Given that tonight was an unpolished hint of what is to come when the show opens to the public in two weeks, it is this reporters recommendation that the reader go see the show!

One could certainly validate seeing this year's dance show via the notion of noble causes such as supporting local artists and supporting the arts programs. In light of the quality of performance demonstrated by the two artistically demanding pieces viewed tonight, patrons need not be concerned with such causes as the showwill speak for itself. It's going to be a great!