Andover Dance Festival allowed students to experiment with different dance styles, music, and groups.
On March 29, less than two weeks after students returned to campus following Spring Vacation, Andover Dance Festival kicked off their first two performances, presented in the Christina A. Rubio Dance Studio in the Pan Athletic Center. A new structure to the previously titled “Dance Open,” the event featured self-choreographed solos, duos, and group pieces. With the oversight of four student producers, both beginner and experienced dancers were able to demonstrate a wide range of styles, with another performance date to be hosted on April 26.
Compared to Dance Open in previous years, Andover Dance Festival took in more solos and groups of dancers who were not in a club or designated group together. This allowed for those who were newer to dance to get a chance to perform and also gave the space for students to experiment with all aspects of the performing process, including choosing music, learning new styles, and coming up with choreography. Performer Alex Giarnese ’25 discussed how he enjoyed this student-led process.
“It is all student-choreographed and really interactive. I got to exchange ideas with my friends, and everything came from our minds. Nothing was overseen. We got to do it by ourselves. We got to schedule our own rehearsals so it worked for us, so nothing was stressful because everything was done by us. I really appreciated that I got to work with other really talented creative minds to put together a piece,” said Giarnese.
The independence granted to performers allowed students to bring styles and genres of dance that weren’t commonly seen on the Andover dance stage. The music used throughout the festival ranged from traditional East Asian music performed by Asian Performing Arts Club (APAC), Blue Strut’s Rihanna performance, to the percussive sounds of Andover’s step team, SLAM. Dance Producer and performer Ashley Park ’24 gave insight into the styles of her two performances: one with SLAM and a traditional Korean solo.
“It was my first year as a part of SLAM, so it was a new type of dance style I was able to participate in… So, I had a really fun time trying to understand different parts of step that I wasn’t really familiar with. For my solo, it was traditional dance so it was… a really good full circle moment, starting with traditional dance and ending my Andover career with traditional dance. The culture of Korea is very encapsulated towards K-Pop recently because of the Korean wave, so I wanted to inform the audience that the origin of Korean music and tradition are from its cultured heritage with the traditional instruments, traditional dances, and costumes that we used,” said Park.
Despite the performance running smoothly on the day of, performers and producers faced some challenges leading up to the first festival. Given that the performance took place shortly after Spring Vacation, producers were faced with the challenge of when to host tech rehearsals and make sure all the dancers were prepared. For the performers, the two week break after rehearsing in Winter Term caused some issues with remembering and preparing the choreography. Giarnese gave insight into some challenges he faced with his duo and trio pieces.
“I would say one challenge we faced in both my duet and trio was coming back from Spring Break and jumping right into tech week and performance. After such a long break, a lot of the choreography was forgotten or hadn’t been recorded, so we had to redo some parts. That week before tech started was a little bit stressful. We had to adapt from not having practice together for two and a half weeks, but we just scheduled extra rehearsals and watched the videos we did have and made sure we were committed to working towards having a final cohesive piece,” said Giarnese.
As the first big performing arts event in Spring Term, Andover Dance Festival started strong with a variety of dance styles. The self-choreographed and student-directed show impressed the audience with the passion and skill demonstrated in only around one hour. Willow Wright ’26 shared her thoughts after watching the festival.
“When [the solos] were happening, I was like, ‘That’s super impressive’ and ‘I don’t think I could do that.’ I was just thinking about the amount of effort, perseverance, and coordination that goes into creating those solos and then the bravery that goes into actually performing it. It is really impressive,” said Wright.
