For the past two weeks, Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT) from Salt Lake City, Utah has been hosting a dance residency at Andover. During this time, the ten company members taught classes for dance as a sport, and introductory academic dance courses, and set two performance pieces for a group of students. The two pieces, performed within a longer show of the company’s repertoire, were performed on Friday and Saturday nights and followed the Michio Itō technique, a forgotten pioneer of modern dance.
In advance of the company coming to campus, Kareem Lewis, Instructor in the Theatre and Dance department, carried out planning and preparation. As a former member of RDT, Lewis is familiar with the company and their diverse works, but he still needed to construct convenient schedules, house the dancers, and figure out how to maximize their impact on the students. After a year of organization, Lewis successfully brought them to campus.
“Because I danced with the company two years ago, from 2020 to 2022, I was just exposed to the breadth of works that they do and I thought it would be great to bring their versatility and diversity to campus so that students can experience that as well… It took me about a year of planning. I had to negotiate a specific time with the company that could work. We also had to negotiate prices. But I spent, I would say a year, just organizing all the details as far as what classes they would teach, what choreographic works they would do for the students, and also what roles they should feature out of their library of dance, that I felt would be the most impactful for the Andover community,” said Lewis.
Among Lewis’s primary goals for the dance department is exposing his students to the significance of dance within history, cultures, and activism. He wanted students to understand that dance is not only a sequence of movements, but a form of expression. In bringing in the residency, he hoped that the exposure to professional dance would inspire students to pursue dance more seriously.
“One of my goals, in general with the dance department, is to show the depth of dance and how it’s related to history, living history, and how dance can be used for social and political activism. So, I think my goal for the community is to see that dance is more than just everyone doing steps on stage, it’s not just about running around and leaping, but that the movements can be made impactful in larger ways that impact the world overall,” said Lewis.
He continued, “I hope that [students] are encouraged and also inspired to pursue dance at a higher level and take the dance training more seriously, now that they can see sort of what it takes to put on a show and be more involved with the pioneers of American modern dance.”
Alex Giarnese ’25, who has taken dance at Andover for the past four years, performed in Gestures, a student-only dance highlighting the basis of the Michio Itō technique. Giarnese loved how the residency enabled him to take classes in a variety of styles, many of which he had not taken in awhile, from a variety of the company dancers. His only lament was that the company’s time at the school was somewhat short.
“I loved being able to take classes in [various] styles with all of the different RDT dancers. We got to do things like jazz, Cunningham, hip-hop, partnering, modern, and contemporary. I got to experience a lot of different styles, some that I haven’t done in a very long time, some that I’ve never done before, which is always super exciting for me and the other dancers. I wish we had a little bit more time with the RDT folks. I think they were super, super cool to work with and I wish we got to take a couple more different kinds of classes because I’m sure they all have tons of styles they’d love to teach us. But, overall…I would totally recommend for them to come back,” said Giarnese.
Orla Naughton ’25 attended the performance in support of her friends who were performing. She enjoyed seeing the students of Andover dancing alongside the company members of RDT. Moreover, Naughton was fascinated by the unique Michio Itō technique and the incorporation of history within the performance. This performance included novel multimedia elements that made the show particularly engaging.
“My favorite part was definitely seeing the students from our school incorporate into the performance. It was a style of dance that I’d never really heard of before, and I liked how they incorporated aspects of dance history into the performance. I didn’t know about [Michio Itō] and it was a unique style. It used very isolated movements and it was something I had never seen before. It was cool to see my friends performing in it and also learning about new histories of dance,” said Naughton.
